A study of the economic consequences of China’s product recalls using food and drug recalls as examples

The economic consequences of product recalls include the short-term market reactions of investors, the reputation recovery mechanism adopted by the management of the recalling company and the long-term value relevance of the recalling company. Forty-one food and drug recalls by Chinese-listed companies between 2007 and 2012 were selected as the research sample. Using companies in the same industry as paired data, 1534 pairings were obtained. The study findings show that investors had negative reactions to food or drug recall incidents during a short event window; that the recalls had a negative externality on other companies in the same industry; that companies that performed voluntary recalls engaged in reputation recovery behaviour; and that companies that performed voluntary recalls possessed better long-term value relevance than their peers in the same industry.