Ownership, analyst coverage, and stock synchronicity in China

Xunan Feng, Na Hu and Anders Johansson

International Review of Financial Analysis, 2016, vol. 45, issue C, 79-96

Abstract: This study examines how ownership structure affects the information environment of publicly traded firms in China. We hypothesize that concentrated ownership and the associated separation of ultimate control and ownership rights create agency conflicts between controlling shareholders and minority investors leading controlling owners to withhold firm-specific information from the market. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the effect of ultimate ownership structure and analyst coverage on stock return synchronicity. We find that a greater separation of control and ownership rights increases the response coefficient of stock return synchronicity to analyst coverage. This result is robust to endogeneity, a series of robustness checks, and an alternative hypothesis based on noise trading. The incentive of controlling owners to limit firm transparency thus leads analysts to disseminate more market-wide information.

Keywords: Analyst coverage; Ownership structure; Control rights; Stock synchronicity; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G14 G15 G30 G32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Working Paper: Ownership, Analyst Coverage, and Stock Synchronicity in China (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:finana:v:45:y:2016:i:c:p:79-96

DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2016.02.002

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