IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecmode/v81y2019icp59-72.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do political connections decrease the accuracy of stock analysts' recommendations in the Chinese stock market?

Author

Listed:
  • He, Feng
  • Ma, Yaming

Abstract

This paper studies the association between the accuracy of analysts' recommendations and political connections in the Chinese stock market. As most brokerage firms in China are state-owned, it raises concerns about conflicts of interest among their employed analysts issuing recommendations for Chinese state-owned enterprises. Based on 8469 analysts' recommendations with different ratings for both state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises from 74 brokerage firms, we document that analysts' recommendations are less accurate for Chinese state-owned enterprises, which supports the hypothesis that conflicts of interest create recommendation biases. Political connections encourage analysts to be more optimistic on SOEs and even to generate misleading “Buy” and “Hold” recommendations. Our results demonstrate the existence of an optimism bias among politically connected analysts on state-owned enterprises in China.

Suggested Citation

  • He, Feng & Ma, Yaming, 2019. "Do political connections decrease the accuracy of stock analysts' recommendations in the Chinese stock market?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 59-72.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:81:y:2019:i:c:p:59-72
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2018.12.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026499931731773X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econmod.2018.12.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Devos, Erik & Hao, Wei & Prevost, Andrew K. & Wongchoti, Udomsak, 2015. "Stock return synchronicity and the market response to analyst recommendation revisions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 376-389.
    2. Robert M. Bushman & Joseph D. Piotroski & Abbie J. Smith, 2004. "What Determines Corporate Transparency?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 207-252, May.
    3. Mehran, Hamid & Stulz, Rene M., 2007. "The economics of conflicts of interest in financial institutions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 267-296, August.
    4. Womack, Kent L, 1996. "Do Brokerage Analysts' Recommendations Have Investment Value?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 137-167, March.
    5. Busse, Jeffrey A. & Clifton Green, T. & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan, 2012. "Buy-side trades and sell-side recommendations: Interactions and information content," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 207-232.
    6. Chemmanur, Thomas & Yan, An, 2009. "Product market advertising and new equity issues," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 40-65, April.
    7. Anup Agrawal & Mark A. Chen, 2008. "Do Analyst Conflicts Matter? Evidence from Stock Recommendations," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(3), pages 503-537, August.
    8. Galanti, Sébastien & Vaubourg, Anne Gaël, 2017. "Optimism bias in financial analysts' earnings forecasts: Do commissions sharing agreements reduce conflicts of interest?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 325-337.
    9. Eitan Goldman & Jörg Rocholl & Jongil So, 2009. "Do Politically Connected Boards Affect Firm Value?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2331-2360, June.
    10. Clarke, Jonathan & Subramanian, Ajay, 2006. "Dynamic forecasting behavior by analysts: Theory and evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 81-113, April.
    11. Michael J. Cooper & Huseyin Gulen & Alexei V. Ovtchinnikov, 2010. "Corporate Political Contributions and Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(2), pages 687-724, April.
    12. Daniel Arand & Alexander G. Kerl, 2015. "Sell†Side Analyst Research and Reported Conflicts of Interest," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 21(1), pages 20-51, January.
    13. Prem G. Mathew & H. Semih Yildirim, 2015. "Does director affiliation lead to analyst bias?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3), pages 272-287, January.
    14. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    15. Gustavo Grullon, 2004. "Advertising, Breadth of Ownership, and Liquidity," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 439-461.
    16. MARA FACCIO & RONALD W. MASULIS & JOHN J. McCONNELL, 2006. "Political Connections and Corporate Bailouts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(6), pages 2597-2635, December.
    17. Nguyen, Xuan, 2015. "On the efficiency of private and state-owned enterprises in mixed markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 130-137.
    18. Jiang, George J. & Lu, Liangliang & Zhu, Dongming, 2014. "The information content of analyst recommendation revisions — Evidence from the Chinese stock market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 1-17.
    19. Barber, Brad M. & Lyon, John D., 1997. "Detecting long-run abnormal stock returns: The empirical power and specification of test statistics," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 341-372, March.
    20. Anup Agrawal & Mark A. Chen, 2012. "Analyst Conflicts and Research Quality," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(02), pages 1-40.
    21. Staglianò, Raffaele & La Rocca, Maurizio & Gerace, Dionigi, 2018. "The impact of ownership concentration and analyst coverage on market liquidity: Comparative evidence from an auction and a specialist market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 203-214.
    22. Bonaparte, Yosef & Kumar, Alok, 2013. "Political activism, information costs, and stock market participation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 760-786.
    23. Lily Fang & Joel Peress, 2009. "Media Coverage and the Cross‐section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(5), pages 2023-2052, October.
    24. Peter Klibanoff & Owen Lamont & Thierry A. Wizman, 1998. "Investor Reaction to Salient News in Closed-End Country Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(2), pages 673-699, April.
    25. Philip Brown & Wendy Beekes & Peter Verhoeven, 2011. "Corporate governance, accounting and finance: A review," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(1), pages 96-172, March.
    26. Brad Barber & Reuven Lehavy & Maureen McNichols & Brett Trueman, 2001. "Can Investors Profit from the Prophets? Security Analyst Recommendations and Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 531-563, April.
    27. Charles JP Chen & Yuan Ding & Chansog (Francis) Kim, 2010. "High-level politically connected firms, corruption, and analyst forecast accuracy around the world," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 41(9), pages 1505-1524, December.
    28. He, Lerong & Wan, Hong & Zhou, Xin, 2014. "How are political connections valued in China? Evidence from market reaction to CEO succession," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 141-152.
    29. Byard, Donal & Li, Ying & Weintrop, Joseph, 2006. "Corporate governance and the quality of financial analysts' information," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 609-625.
    30. George J. Jiang & Woojin Kim, 2016. "Evaluating analysts' value: evidence from recommendation revisions around stock price jumps," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 167-194, February.
    31. Raymond Fisman, 2001. "Estimating the Value of Political Connections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1095-1102, September.
    32. Stickel, Scott E, 1992. "Reputation and Performance among Security Analysts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1811-1836, December.
    33. Hamdi Ben‐Nasr & Narjess Boubakri & Jean‐Claude Cosset, 2012. "The Political Determinants of the Cost of Equity: Evidence from Newly Privatized Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3), pages 605-646, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lingchen Liu & Yan Gu & Kung‐Cheng Ho & Chiu‐Lan Chang, 2022. "Customer concentration and analyst following: Evidence from China," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(1), pages 97-110, January.
    2. Young‐Soo Choi & Svetlana Mira & Nicholas Taylor, 2022. "Local versus foreign analysts' forecast accuracy: does herding matter?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(S1), pages 1143-1188, April.
    3. He, Feng & Ma, Yaming & Zhang, Xiaojie, 2020. "How does economic policy uncertainty affect corporate Innovation?–Evidence from China listed companies," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 225-239.
    4. Zhang, Xiaotao & Liang, Junpeng & He, Feng, 2019. "Private information advantage or overconfidence? Performance of intraday arbitrage speculators in the Chinese stock market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    5. Islam, Md Shahidul & Alam, Md Samsul & Bin Hasan, Shehub & Mollah, Sabur, 2022. "Firm-level political risk and distance-to-default," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hui-Fun Yu & Tsui-Jung Lin & Hai-Yen Chang & Yu-Huai Wang, 2020. "The Impact of Political Connection and Information Asymmetry on Investment Efficiency: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-15, July.
    2. Pantzalis, Christos & Park, Jung Chul, 2014. "Too close for comfort? Geographic propinquity to political power and stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 57-78.
    3. Boubakri, Narjess & Guedhami, Omrane & Mishra, Dev & Saffar, Walid, 2012. "Political connections and the cost of equity capital," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 541-559.
    4. Feng, Xunan & Johansson, Anders C. & Zhang, Tianyu, 2015. "Mixing business with politics: Political participation by entrepreneurs in China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 220-235.
    5. Sharma, Piyush & Cheng, Louis T.W. & Leung, T.Y., 2020. "Impact of political connections on Chinese export firms' performance – Lessons for other emerging markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 24-34.
    6. Sheridan Titman & Takahiro Azuma & Katsuhiko Okada & Yukinobu Hamuro, 2014. "Is No News Good News?: The Streaming News Effect on Investor Behavior Surrounding Analyst Stock Revision Announcement," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 29-51, March.
    7. Habib, Ahsan & Ranasinghe, Dinithi & Muhammadi, Abdul Haris & Islam, Ainul, 2018. "Political connections, financial reporting and auditing: Survey of the empirical literature," Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 37-51.
    8. Thomas J. Chemmanur & An Yan, 2019. "Advertising, Attention, and Stock Returns," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 9(03), pages 1-51, September.
    9. Kusnadi, Yuanto & Srinidhi, Bin, 2020. "Cross-country differences in the effect of political connections on stock price informativeness," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    10. Stephen Gray & Iman Harymawan & John Nowland, 2016. "Political and government connections on corporate boards in Australia: Good for business?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 41(1), pages 3-26, February.
    11. Jia, Yuecheng & Simkins, Betty & Feng, Hongrui, 2023. "Political connections and short sellers," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    12. Jiang, Haiyan & Hu, Yuanyuan & Zhang, Honghui & Zhou, Donghua, 2018. "Benefits of Downward Earnings Management and Political Connection: Evidence from Government Subsidy and Market Pricing," The International Journal of Accounting, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 255-273.
    13. Agoraki, Maria-Eleni K. & Gounopoulos, Dimitrios & Kouretas, Georgios P., 2022. "U.S. banks’ IPOs and political money contributions," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    14. Baloria, Vishal P. & Heese, Jonas, 2018. "The effects of media slant on firm behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 184-202.
    15. López-Iturriaga, Félix J. & Santana Martín, Domingo Javier, 2019. "The payout policy of politically connected firms: Tunnelling or reputation?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    16. Ilona Babenko & Viktar Fedaseyeu & Song Zhang, 2017. "Do CEOs affect employees' political choices?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1750, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    17. Colonnelli, Emanuele & Lagaras, Spyridon & Ponticelli, Jacopo & Prem, Mounu & Tsoutsoura, Margarita, 2022. "Revealing corruption: Firm and worker level evidence from Brazil," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1097-1119.
    18. Coulomb, Renaud & Sangnier, Marc, 2014. "The impact of political majorities on firm value: Do electoral promises or friendship connections matter?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 158-170.
    19. repec:zbw:bofitp:2013_006 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Ilona Babenko & Viktar Fedaseyeu & Song Zhang, 2017. "Executives In Politics," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1762, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    21. Wei, Chunyan & Hu, Shiyang & Chen, Feng, 2020. "Do political connection disruptions increase labor costs in a government-dominated market? Evidence from publicly listed companies in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political connection; Conflicts of interest; Analysts' recommendations accuracy; Optimistic bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:81:y:2019:i:c:p:59-72. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/30411 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.