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In response to growing environmental challenges, there is an urgent need to understand how corporations can leverage new technologies to boost sustainability and eco‐innovation. This study addresses this need by investigating Artificial Intelligence adoption (AIA) influence on green innovation (greenovation) performance among Chinese firms as China's expanding digital economy and severe ecological pressures make it unique study context. Specifically, panel data on 8722 firm‐year observations from Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2017 is analyzed to test the relationship. The main findings show that higher AIA is associated with increased greenovation, measured through green patents. This positive effect is more pronounced among privately‐owned enterprises versus state‐owned enterprises. Additionally, financial analysts are found to strengthen the AI‐greennovation link through information dissemination and scrutiny. Importantly, the study findings are robust and validated through a battery of tests, including change regression, instrumental variable methods, propensity score match (PSM), and sysGMM. Overall, this study provides novel empirical evidence that AI holds promise as an enabler of corporate eco‐innovation. The findings have crucial implications for research and practice regarding leveraging digital technologies for sustainability, especially in emerging economies like China that is undergoing rapid technological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of analyst teams' gender diversity on the accuracy of their earnings forecasts. We find that, compared with single-gender analyst teams, mixed-gender analyst teams generate more accurate earnings forecasts and have less optimism bias. The desirable effect of mixed-gender analyst teams on the accuracy of earnings forecasts is more significant in the highly educated or experienced analyst teams, in smaller brokerages with fewer star analysts, and in firms audited by non-Big -Four accounting firms or with less analyst coverage. Further studies find that, female analysts who work in teams produce more accurate earnings forecasts than they work individually. In addition, when a single-gender analyst team transforms into a mixed-gender analyst team, its reports have more accuracy and less optimism bias than before, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the valuation usefulness of fair values and related information disclosure in China and examines how regional‐level market institutions influence the valuation usefulness of fair value information. Based on a sample of Chinese listed companies during 2007 to 2016, the empirical results show a negative association between overall fair values and analyst forecast accuracy. Further analyses suggest that the negative association is likely driven by biases and/or errors in fair value estimates. Using a difference‐in‐difference research design, the study also documents that the implementation of ASBE 39 in 2014 has improved the valuation usefulness of fair values. There is evidence that different aspects of market institutions—including the extent of government intervention in the market and the legal environment—influence analysts' use of fair value information. This study contributes to the literature by providing new and different evidence on the usefulness of fair values to financial analysts outside developed countries. Moreover, by taking advantage of the uneven institutional development across China, the study shows that different aspects of market institutions influence the valuation usefulness of fair value information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the relationship between water risk and the information environment of financial analysts using data from Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2020. We theorized that corporate water risk deteriorates analysts' information environment by affecting operational and financial uncertainty and corporate legitimacy. Specifically, we found that corporate water risk is associated with higher analyst forecast errors and analyst forecast dispersion and lower analyst following. This relationship weakens with corporate water information disclosure and strengthens with the environmental attention of local governments. Furthermore, we explored the impact of corporate water risk on financial risk and future financial performance and discovered that water risk increases corporate financial risk and reduces future earnings. This suggests that corporate nonfinancial risk may also include subtle financial risk, and current water risk has a certain predictive effect on future earnings, which is an interesting finding. Our results are robust to a range of tests, including instrumental variable, generalized method of moments estimates, propensity score matching, and alternative measures of analysts' information environment. Generally, our study provides insights into the complementary role of nonfinancial risks represented by water risk in understanding financial risk and has important implications for academia and practitioners in understanding the economic consequences of corporate water risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that firms strategically alter their disclosures when investors' access to information via search engines is interrupted. We conduct a textual analysis and exploit an exogenous event—Google's 2010 surprising withdrawal from mainland China, which significantly hampered domestic investors' ability to search for foreign information but did not affect their cost to access domestic information. Following Google's exit, Chinese firms' announcements on foreign transactions become more bullish relative to domestic transactions. Optimism in disclosure is especially rosy if the press releases are conveying negative news or are issued by poorly governed firms. This effect is mitigated in the presence of foreign investors or analysts affiliated with foreign brokers who are not subject to foreign information censorship by the government. The increase in search cost also appears to leave domestic news media and financial analysts more vulnerable to the influence of corporate disclosure. These optimistic announcements allow insiders to harvest higher returns from selling their shares and are associated with a higher likelihood of corporate misconduct. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 71272072 and 71572042]. X. Yu gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Arthur M. Weimer Fellowship. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4521. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of share pledging by controlling shareholders on earnings informativeness. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of 23,120 firm-year observations from 2003 to 2019 in China, this paper examines how share pledging by controlling shareholders affects earnings informativeness, measured by earnings persistence and earnings response coefficients. Findings: This paper finds that share pledging by controlling shareholders makes earnings less informative. The adverse impacts are more pronounced when share pledging distorts incentives of controlling shareholders to a greater extent and when the signaling of share pledging about a firm's weak future performance is stronger. Finally, this paper further shows that the 2018 new regulation on share pledging effectively alleviates the negative impacts of share pledging on earnings informativeness. Originality/value: First, this paper adds to the growing literature on the economic consequence of share pledging by documenting the adverse impacts of share pledging on earnings informativeness. The literature on the economic consequence of share pledging is often mixed, which justifies further research on the impacts of share pledging on earnings informativeness. Second, this paper documents a new signaling channel through which share pledging affects earnings informativeness. Third, the finding of this paper on the 2018 new regulation on share pledging may be interesting to research agencies, such as the Chartered Financial analyst institute and Institutional Shareholder Services institute that recommend tightening regulations on share pledging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the decision usefulness of key audit matters (KAMs) disclosures from the perspective of financial analysts. Design/methodology/approach: Using data from two groups of Chinese-listed firms subject to different audit standards, the authors use a quasi-natural experiment and the difference-in-differences approach to examine the impact of KAMs on analyst forecasts. The authors also conduct a textual analysis on management disclosures as well as on the content of KAM disclosures. Findings: The results of this study show that both forecast errors and dispersion have significantly declined for the firms disclosing KAMs compared to the firms without such disclosures. Further analysis presents evidence that KAM disclosures have resulted in simultaneous increase in management disclosures and audit quality. In addition, auditor characteristics, such as auditor's dependence on client fees and its industry specialization, and firm's characteristics, such as its ownership structure and its social connection with the auditor, appear to affect the informativeness of KAM disclosures. The authors also perform content analysis of KAMs to provide additional insight. Research limitations/implications: As AH firms are required to adopt the expanded audit report one year before A shares firms, by design, there is only one year in which these two types of companies differ. Therefore, the results without overgeneralizing the impact of KAM disclosures should be interpreted. In addition, this study involves the Chinese market alone and, therefore, may be affected by factors peculiar to the functioning of the Chinese economy and financial markets. Originality/value: The main contribution of this study lies in highlighting the salience of KAM context in shaping the relationship between auditors, managers and analysts and its collective impact on information environment. The findings of this study are significant in that they help establish the importance of KAM disclosures in helping to assure that higher quality financial information is available to capital markets, as well as information that is otherwise unavailable given disclosure mandates in China. This study adds to the literature on the importance of providing additional means of safeguarding auditor independence and on the value of auditor expertise in providing useful content in audit disclosures. Moreover, the findings suggest that the expanded audit report can help reduce the level of asymmetric information, especially for state-owned entities. They provide insight on how the new audit rule influences managers and auditors communicating complex accounting matters as well as the moderating effect of the social connections between auditors and firm executives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking advantage of a recently established dataset that records financial analysts' firm visits, this study examines the factors that determine the number of buy-side and sell-side analyst firm visits in a given year and how investors respond to these visits. Both buy-side and sell-side analysts seem motivated to visit firms when they are considering buying or recommending that investors buy shares rather than when they are considering selling or when they are recommending that investors sell shares. However, there are still significant differences in the firms that buy-side and sell-side analysts choose to visit. Using a binomial count model, this study shows that buy-side analyst firm visits are heavily focused on industry leaders—firms with a high share of the total revenue in their given industry—while sell-side analyst firm visits are not. By looking at the response of investors to buy-side or sell-side analyst firm visits, a regression analysis uncovers evidence that investors trust buy-side analysts, responding to firm visits by buy-side analysts by purchasing more shares in the firm. Investors do not have the same level of confidence in sell-side analysts. Investors respond to firm visits by sell-side analysts by selling more shares in the firm. This phenomenon is even more significant for firms that are outperforming the market. The results suggest that there is a significant cost to the conflict of interest inherent in sell-side analysts' research. These costs increase when analysts recommend outperforming firms to the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Question/Issue: We examine the role of corporate executives in dividend tunneling activity by controlling shareholders and whether the correlation between executive ownership and dividend tunneling is influenced by internal and external governance mechanisms. Research Findings/Insights: We find increased executive ownership may lead to a higher level of dividend tunneling. This is further strengthened by our finding that the positive effect of executive ownership on dividend tunneling is more pronounced for firms with weaker minority shareholder protection. In addition, our results show that higher degrees of state ownership may further intensify this positive association. Finally, we find that analyst coverage has a moderating effect and constrains the collusion between controlling shareholders and executives in dividend tunneling activity. Theoretical/Academic Implications: Our study contributes to the literature on the role of managerial ownership in controlling shareholders' dividend tunneling activity. We fill a gap in the literature on the corporate agency problem by providing evidence that dividends have been employed by controlling shareholders as a means of tunneling and that executives with higher ownership are more likely to collude with controlling shareholders in dividend tunneling activities. Practitioner/Policy Implications: This study contributes to the debates around the promotion of the cash dividend policy in China, as our findings show that cash dividends are used as a tunneling vehicle. Providing important evidence to regulators, our findings support the argument that external monitoring by financial analysts can effectively constrain dividend tunneling by dominant shareholders, especially in the context of emerging stock markets with high ownership concentration, weak minority shareholder protection, and an underdeveloped legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the impact of managerial ownership on the stock price volatility in China by considering corporate transparency as a mediator. By analyzing data from 558 Chinese listed companies between 2016 and 2020, empirical results from a multiple linear regression model show a positive correlation between managerial ownership and corporate transparency. The results also provide the evidence that the negative correlation between managerial ownership and stock volatility is more (less) pronounced in companies with less (more) transparency. Enterprises should cooperate with financial analysts to increase corporate transparency. Individual investors can analyze the market performance by examining the company's equity structure, the number of cooperative analysts, and the number of research reports so as to provide more reliable basis for investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identity theory in economics reveals that organisational identification motivates managers to take actions that are strongly aligned with firm interests. Nevertheless, organisational identification may also play a role in personal incentives. Leveraging the availability of CEO organisational identification data from the national internal control survey of listed firms in China, we document a positive impact of CEO organisational identification on corporate innovation. We also find that the positive impact is more pronounced for firms whose CEOs own shares, that are followed by more financial analysts, and that have higher institutional ownership. Additional analyses suggest that the interaction between CEO organisational identification and corporate innovation investment significantly enhances firm value. Overall, our study shows that CEO organisational identification is a non‐trivial driver of firm innovation and growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of analyst coverage on corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling using a sample of listed firms in China for 2010–2019. Results reveal that analyst coverage decreases CSR decoupling, and that the negative association is more pronounced for non‐state‐owned firms and for firms with high information asymmetry. The baseline results remain consistent after application of several robustness and endogeneity tests, including two‐stage least squares (2SLS) and Heckman two‐stage analysis. The results extend the literature on analyst coverage and scarce studies on determinants of CSR decoupling. Practitioners may alleviate CSR decoupling by properly using the monitoring role of financial analysts in corporate governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of controlling shareholders' share pledging on goodwill impairment. Design/methodology/approach: This study empirically investigates the effect of controlling shareholders' share pledging on both the decision and amount of goodwill impairment for Chinese listed firms from 2007 to 2017. Findings: This study finds that the proportion of controlling shareholders' share pledging is negatively related to both impairment decisions and amounts; these negative relationships are intensified when firms face high stock price crash risks. In addition, the empirical results show that firms with larger share pledging are less likely to recognize goodwill impairment or are likely to record relatively smaller impairment amounts when they are followed by fewer financial analysts. Originality/value: Most of the relevant literature has focused on managers' behaviors toward goodwill impairments, while less attention has been given to goodwill impairments from the perspective of controlling shareholders. In fact, controlling shareholders may have strong incentives to protect their control rights when they exercise disproportionate control rights, especially in China. Given the high ownership concentration, prior studies may not have adequately explained the agency problem of controlling shareholders in goodwill impairment. This study uses share pledging as a case to fill this gap. Specifically, it investigates whether both goodwill impairment decisions and amounts are affected by controlling shareholders' share pledging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causal effects of the coverage by financial analysts of the incidence of corporate misconduct in China. Using a unique dataset consisting of Chinese listed companies that committed misconduct in information disclosure and were consequently fined by the regulatory bodies, we show that firms covered by a larger number of financial analysts are less likely to engage in corporate misconduct. This could be explained by the information production role of analyst, which is especially important in emerging markets. We show that the presence of more covering analysts helps provide quality information and reduce information asymmetry regarding the firms. Because of information production by analysts, a firm could employ more intensive policies: increasing executive pay–performance sensitivity and executive turnover‐to‐performance sensitivity, which promote managerial incentives in improving corporate governance, thus leading to less corporate misconduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the unique setting of the 2007 stock market bubble in China to examine whether information dissemination mitigates bubbles. Using multiple measures of bubble intensity for each stock, we find significantly smaller bubbles in stocks with greater analyst coverage. The abating effect of analyst coverage on bubble intensity is weaker when there is greater disagreement among analysts. This suggests that, in line with resale option theories of bubbles, one channel through which analyst coverage mitigates bubbles is by coordinating investors.beliefs. Consistent with this particular information mechanism, stock turnover is negatively correlated with analyst coverage, and the abating effect of analyst coverage on stock turnover is weaker when there is more disagreement among analysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to focus on the role of financial analysts in corporate fraud in the Chinese stock market. Design/methodology/approach: Data on the analyst coverage and all the types of corporate fraud were obtained for 16,284 company-year observations of Chinese companies. The sample was subsequently divided into those of state-owned enterprises, before and after financial crisis. Findings: The overall results indicate that analyst coverage effectively deters the occurrence of fraud. The sub-sample results suggest that the impact of analysts on deterring fraud is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, especially after the financial crisis. The path analyses show that analyst coverage can deter corporate frauds by affecting information transparency and investor attention. Furthermore, the results show that the deterrence role of financial analysts varies with fraud types: it is more pronounced in deterring disclosure fraud, but not as effective in illegal guarantees and illegal insider dealing. Moreover, analyst coverage can deter the occurrence of fictitious reporting, intentional postponement and material omission. Originality/value: This paper not only examined the overall fraud probability but also taking into consideration the heterogeneity of the information availability and research focus of financial analysts and examined the analysts' impact on the occurrence of difference types of fraud. Moreover, this paper explored why financial analysts can deter corporate frauds through path analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of hierarchy on analyst teams' performance using a large sample of financial analysts from China. Hierarchy, defined as the disparity in power or status within a group, which we operationalize as the difference in experience between the senior and junior analyst in a team, is an important aspect of team structure that could affect team performance. We find that analyst teams with a hierarchy outperform flat teams (teams without a clear hierarchy). Specifically, hierarchical teams issue forecasts with higher accuracy, less optimism bias, less co-movement with the consensus, and stronger investor reactions. The results remain robust after we control for a number of firm and analyst characteristics and fixed effects. Further analysis shows that working in a hierarchical team helps junior analysts improve their individual forecasts for other firms, and senior analysts also benefit from working with junior analysts in hierarchical teams. Our results provide important insights into understanding the effect of team structure on the performance of analyst teams who issue majority of earnings forecasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how gender and beauty affect the likelihood of being voted as an All-Star in the financial analyst profession in both the United States and China. We find that female analysts are more likely to be voted as All-Star analysts in the United States, but good-looking female U.S. analysts are less likely to be voted as All-Stars. The conclusion is the opposite for Chinese analysts. We find that female analysts in China are less likely to be voted as All-Stars, but the likelihood increases with their facial attractiveness. These findings implicate a beauty penalty for female analysts in the United States and gender discrimination against female analysts in China. This career path evidence from a competitive financial industry suggests that gender and beauty biases may be rooted deeply in culture and the legal environment and should not be treated homogenously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide "Comments" on two previous papers in this journal about fair value in Chinese accounting. It extends those papers by considering developments since 2006. Design/methodology/approach: The paper analyses the contents of Chinese Accounting Standards, dividing the references to fair value into several different categories. This analysis is compared to the findings of the two previous papers. This paper then re-assesses the evidence about the alleged pressures from international institutions on Chinese accounting. Findings: The two previous papers greatly overstate the importance of fair value in Chinese accounting, partly through misinterpreting Chinese standards and partly because of a lack of caveat that the instructions about fair value often relate to special circumstances or unusual companies. The theorising about Chinese enthusiasm for fair value is misguided: the present author suggests that China became keen to adopt international standards despite their use of fair value not because of it, and that China removed much of the fair value when it adapted international standards. The extension of the analysis beyond 2006 provides a fuller coverage but does not alter the conclusions. Research limitations/implications: The earlier of the two papers examined has been extensively cited. Researchers need to be warned that the technical content and the conclusions of both papers are questionable. Authors should define terms clearly and should provide sufficient reference detail to enable readers to check findings. Practical implications: Multinational companies, auditors and financial analysts should not be misled into thinking that Chinese accounting makes extensive use of fair value accounting. Originality/value: This paper critically re-assesses two previous papers, starting with detailed technical data and moving through to the influence of international institutions. This paper also newly extends the analysis of Chinese standards beyond 2006. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SYNOPSIS: Against the backdrop of the Chinese Directive 40 (China's Reg FD) issued in 2007 as an attempt to curb insider trading and to level the information playing field, this study investigates whether analysts' private information acquisition influences the extent to which firm-specific information is impounded into stock prices, i.e., stock price synchronicity, and how the restrictions on selective disclosures imposed by Directive 40 have shaped the relationship between analyst information acquisition and synchronicity. Using a pre-Directive 40 sample, we show that synchronicity is negatively related to analysts' private information acquisition, which provides support for the "information advantage" argument of analysts' information production. However, the ability of analysts' private information acquisition in improving firm-specific information incorporated into stock price is mitigated post-Directive 40 due to a restriction on selective disclosures and/or private communication. Moreover, we find that this regulatory impact varies for firms being followed by affiliated analysts versus non-affiliated analysts. JEL Classifications: G14; G15; G17; G18. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the proposition that firms with disproportionately more analysts herding in their coverage, as measured by a larger herding index value, have higher crash risk. Our findings are consistent with the main proposition. The results suggest that information production, rather than monitoring, is the primary mechanism behind the positive relation between herding and crash risk. Our conclusion is robust to different measures of crash risk, crash risk windows, herding measures, subsamples, and instrumental estimation. In addition, using post-earnings announcement drift, we report that analyst herding slows down bad news transmission in the market. Our findings extend the literature by documenting that analyst herding plays a role in enhancing crash risk. Analyst herding has economic consequences on the covered firms. We offer support for the concern in the literature regarding analyst herding and market fluctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial analysts are important information intermediaries in the capital market. This study investigates whether information about working capital management is useful for financial analysts of Chinese firms. With a sample of listed companies from 2004 to 2014, we find that the efficiency of working capital management is positively associated with the number of analyst following and analyst forecast accuracy, and negatively associated with analyst forecast dispersion. Specifically, when the cash conversion cycle becomes longer, number of analyst following and the accuracy of their mean forecasts decrease, while the forecast dispersion increases. The findings of this study indicate a potential mechanism through which information about working capital management is incorporated in stock price in emerging markets such as China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article investigates the impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption on the accuracy of Chinese analysts’ earnings forecasts. We find that after IFRS adoption, the accuracy of Chinese analysts’ forecasts decreases rather than increasing as they do in developed countries documented by the extant literature. Further investigation finds that this decrease is associated with a fair value measurement of financial assets held for trading. Our finding provides empirical evidence supporting the argument that the effectiveness of IFRS adoption could be negative in a developing country depending on its setting and fair value measurement brought about by IFRS could contribute to the negative effect in this setting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the impact of female analysts' coverage on firm's philanthropic activities amidst the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Using a hand-collected dataset of corporate philanthropy, the paper provides robust evidence that firms covered by female analysts are more likely to contribute actively to the well-being of societies by increasing corporate donation. This positive relationship is more pronounced if the company is privately controlled or covered by female analysts with more working experience, or located in more infectious provinces. Overall, our findings call for more female analyst recruitment, yielding benefits of pressuring firms to engage in philanthropy. • Firms covered by more female analysts provide more donation during the pandemic. • This positive impact is more pronounced if analysts have more working experience. • The positive relationship is more pronounced if a firm is privately controlled. • The positive impact is more pronounced if a firm is in more infectious province. • Firm site visit is the channel that female analysts affect corporate donation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between ownership structure and the properties of analysts’ forecasts in China’s unique corporate setting. Design/methodology/approach – Multiple regression models were used to examine the influence of ownership structure mechanisms on analysts’ forecast properties for listed Chinese firms during the period 2008-2012. Findings – The paper finds that analysts’ forecast accuracy is higher for listed firms with high levels of foreign ownership and managerial ownership. However, the complex pyramidal ownership structure could make corporate information less transparent and then increase the complexity of forecasting; hence, it results in less precise analysts’ forecasts. Interestingly, the relationship between state ownership and analysts’ forecast properties appears to be non-linear (an inverted U-shape), and the inflection point at which the relationship becomes negative occurs at state ownership over 45 per cent. Originality/value – To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate the influence of ownership structure mechanisms on the properties of analysts’ forecasts in an emerging market, and the findings provide some insight on how the properties of analysts’ forecast might be shaped by certain ownership and control features in the context of concentrated state ownership and complex pyramidal ownership structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to make a comparison, different from existing literature solely focusing on voluntary earnings forecasts and ex post earnings surprise, between the effects of mandatory earnings surprise warnings and voluntary information disclosure issued by management teams on financial analysts in terms of the number of followings and the accuracy of earnings forecasts. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses panel data analysis with fixed effects on data collected from Chinese public firms between 2006 and 2010. It uses an exogenous regulation enforcement to minimise the endogeneity problem. Findings – This paper finds that financial analysts are less likely to follow firms which mandatorily issue earnings surprise warnings ex ante than those voluntarily issue earnings forecasts. Moreover, ex post, they issue less accurate and more dispersed forecasts on former firms. The results support Brown et al.’s (2009) finding in the USA and suggest that the earnings surprise warnings affect information asymmetries. Practical implications – This paper justifies the mandatory earnings surprise warnings policy issued by Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission in 2006. Originality/value – Mandatory earnings surprise is a unique practical regulation for publicly listed firms in China. This paper, for the first time, provides empirical evaluation on the effectiveness of a mandatory information disclosure policy in China. Consistent with existing literature on information disclosure by public firms in other countries, this paper finds that, in China, voluntary information disclosure captures more private information than mandatory information disclosure on corporate earnings ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study investigates changes in foreign analyst behavior before and after Chinese New Accounting Standards was implemented during 2007. The empirical results show that after the new accounting standards were implemented, forecast error among foreign analysts decreased in both absolute and relative terms in comparison with domestic analysts, and foreign analysts forecast earnings more frequently than they did before the new accounting standards. These results imply that the implementation of new accounting standards in the Chinese capital market helped mitigate both information asymmetry between listed firms in China and foreign investors, and the “home bias” of foreign analysts. It also increased the attractiveness of listed firms and facilitated international communication and cooperation. This study also has significant implications for how resource allocation efficiency in the Chinese capital market can be raised and how the “introducing in” policy should be assessed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The stock analysts are expected to enhance the effectiveness of the market through transmitting the information and reducing the cost of information analysis. Based on the information about the firms listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets during the period of 2005 - 2006, our study suggests that the analyst following is negatively correlated to the capital cost in 531 firms. As information intermediary, the analysts influence the capital cost, which verifies the theoretical hypothesis proposed by Easle and O'hara (2004) that information is another important factor affecting the capital cost besides the classical three-factor model. A possible logic explanation for this effect is that the analyst following impacts the investor base of firms, thereby affecting the cost of capital financing. Our empirical results also confirm Merton's (1987) Investor Recognition Hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the samples from every Monday's column 'the Most Promising Stocks Recommended by Analysts This Week' on Shanghai Securities News during the period from Sep.2000 to Dec.2003, this paper analyzes the performance of the stocks recommended by analysts during the following week. Firstly, the analysts are inclined to recommend the stocks with better performance in the latest week. Secondly, the portfolios formed by the analyst recommendations have remarkably positive abnormal returns on Monday, while they do not outperform the market from Tuesday to Friday, even have remarkably negative abnormal returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the ideological paradigm shifts of the world views of China since the founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921. Reasons behind the disadvantage of the analysts in the West in interpreting Chinese ideological paradigm shifts; Definition of ideology according to American modernization theorist David Apter; Philosophical view of Karl Marx regarding history.

Undoubtedly, the growth of production and the expansion of consumer markets in the People's Republic of China (PRC) is one of the most important textile phenomena of the late twentieth century. As investors have turned their attention to this issue, there has been a burgeoning of commercial intelligence outlining the business trends and opportunities in China. With this in mind, this paper considers the statistical problems faced by those analysts who wish to offer a comprehensive review of China's textile industry and, in particular, examines the three key systems which cover the textile and related industries in the PRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]