This paper explores the relationship between ESG ratings and real earnings management using the data of Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2021. We find that ESG ratings and real earnings management are negatively correlated. It reveals that the improvement of ESG rating will help to improve the level of corporate governance, standardize the business activities of enterprises and thus help to reduce the real earnings management of enterprises. Our findings still hold after controlling for potential endogeneity and robustness issues. Further analysis shows that internal and external oversight of companies further strengthens the negative relationship between ESG ratings and true earnings management. Overall, the impact mechanism of ESG rating on real earnings management revealed by us has clear policy implications for how managers can improve the quality of information disclosure in emerging markets.

Direct experience of a peer’s punishment might have a sobering effect above and beyond deterrence (information about punishments). We test this mechanism in China studying the reactions to listed state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) punishments for fraudulent loan guarantees by firms in the same location or industry (peers) and non-peer firms, across SOEs and non-SOEs. After experiencing SOEs’ punishments, peer SOEs cut their loan guarantees by more than non-peer SOEs and peer non-SOEs, even if information is common to all firms. The reaction is stronger for peer SOEs whose CEOs have higher career concerns or face lower costs of cutting guarantees.

Using a director-level dataset of board proposal voting by independent directors of public companies, we analyze the effects of career concerns and current reputation stock on independent directors in their voting behavior. Younger directors and directors in their second (and last) terms, who have stronger career concerns, are more likely to be aligned with investors rather than the managers. Their dissenting behavior is eventually rewarded in the market place in the form of more outside career opportunities. Directors with higher reputation stocks (measured by positive news media mentioning and the number of directorships) are also more likely to dissent. Finally, we find that career concerns are significantly stronger among directors who already enjoy higher reputation.

Using the staggered opening of governmental public data platforms in China, we employ the difference-in-difference approach to investigate how public data access affects stock price synchronicity. We find that stock price synchronicity significantly drops after the public data platform is established in a firm’s headquarters city. The underlying mechanism is reducing information acquisition costs rather than increasing market attention or corporate information disclosure quality. Furthermore, the informational role of public data platforms magnifies under higher informed trade risk, poorer corporate governance, or better regional economic and innovation capacity. We highlight the role of public data in facilitating financial market efficiency.

How to shape a firm’s stock price resilience in the increasingly uncertain environment has become an important topic. This paper investigates the effect of important market participantsfinancial analysts-on stock price resilience. Based on data from 3,444 listed firms from China, we find that firms with higher analyst coverage are more resilient during the Covid-19 induced crisis, which is manifested by a lower pandemic-induced decline in stock price, shorter duration of decline period, higher recovery probability, and shorter duration of the recovery period after the shock. This positive relationship is more prominent for small firms but does not depend on ownership type, and the ratio of star analyst coverage. Further channel tests show that analysts could help in attracting attention from media and institutional investors, improving corporate governance, and reducing financial constraints, which in turn enhance the ability of stock prices to absorb pandemic shocks.

In this paper, we construct a content analysis structure to explore whether corporate governance information in voluntary disclosures can predict management expenses in the next term. Employing the site visit information disclosure of firms listed on the Chinese A-share market from 2012 to 2021, we find that corporate governance information disclosure is motivated by ownership concentration,and that corporate governance information can predict management expenses and comprises incremental information, indicating that the content analysis we construct is valuable and the disclosure of corporate governance information can mitigate the agency problems.There is a difference between state-owned listed firms and nonstate-owned listed firms.

Distinct from existing studies on general institutional investors and institutional investor cliques, this study examines how common institutional owners, who simultaneously hold more than 5% equity blocks in at least two publicly traded firms within the same industry, influence firms’ bad mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China. Contrary to the “conspiracy tort” view, according to which common institutional owners are more likely to vote for bad M&A deals to pursue internalized gains from industry portfolios (Antón et al., 2022b), our results strongly support the “synergy governance” view, according to which common institutional owners perform more actively and effectively in monitoring against bad M&As and improving M&A quality. There is further evidence that common institutional owners with greater peer linkages and industry power and longer-term holdings are more likely to oppose deals with negative acquirer returns. Finally, we find that the effect of common institutional ownership on M&As is more pronounced among firms with stronger earnings management, moderate stock return synchronicity, less management shareholding and higher management expenses. The results are consistent with the “synergy governance” hypothesis whereby common institutional owners are able to leverage their advantages of industry information and supervisory experience to improve the information environment and corporate governance of the firms they hold. Overall, in China’s market, common institutional owners play an active external governance role and effectively improve M&A quality.

This study investigates the impact of independent directors' participation in the shareholders meeting on corporate governance, and finds that the more frequently the independent directors attend shareholder meetings, the lower the degree of earnings management by the enterprise; the mechanism test shows that more information increases the probability, frequency, and severity of independent directors’ subsequent dissenting opinions; This study identified a new channel for independent directors to independently obtain true information and this is of great significance for regulators, shareholders, company board, and other stakeholders with an interest in how the information influence independent directors governance effects.

We examine an important yet understudied form of reputational sanction in China, namely public criticisms imposed on culpable firms by the Chinese stock exchanges from 2013 to 2018. We find significantly negative cumulative abnormal returns around the announcement date, and they were affected by several factors, including financing propensity, governance mechanism, and equity nature. However, the market reaction is significantly negative only for firms relying on external financing and non-state enterprises, and importantly, becomes insignificant in cases where the firm had self-exposed misconduct before the official announcement of public criticism. Further, we examine other effects of public criticism, finding that public criticism does not improve firms’ long-term values, nor produce strong deterrence to change their behaviour. Overall, the evidence of the effects of public criticism on culpable firms is mixed, suggesting that reputational sanction is a weak, if not ineffective, instrument of market regulation in China.

We examine the information content of changes in shareholdings after private issuance of public equity (PIPE) by mutual funds that participate in PIPEs in China. The results show that the changes in shareholdings is positively related to alpha and cumulative abnormal return (CAR) for PIPE issuers with high information asymmetry, suggesting that the participating mutual funds have superior information. These results are robust after controlling for investment skill, geographic location, and alumni relation. The positive relation between shareholding change and information content is driven by PIPE issuers with weaker corporate governance. In addition, the positive relation is stronger when the placement discount is lower. These results are consistent with a hypothesis that controlling shareholders/management in Chinese PIPE firms may collude with mutual funds to do tunneling.