Research On The Impact Of Economic Policy Uncertainty On Corporate Information Disclosure

Since the global financial crisis in 2008,the economies of most countries in the world have been affected to varying degrees.Governments of various countries are actively and frequently adjusting economic policies to deal with economic downside risks.China is also unavoidable in the context of economic globalization.No small impact,the government has also issued a series of policies to intervene in economic development,such as the 4 trillion yuan investment stimulus plan,the Belt and Road,supply-side structural reforms and other macroeconomic policies.The promulgation and implementation of these policies have effectively eased It explains the various difficulties that China’s economy faces at this stage and promotes the sustainable and healthy development of the economy.However,the market environment is changing rapidly,and the government often cannot make accurate judgments on various kinds of information appearing in the market economy.Its policies are usually lagging.In addition,the process of economic policy formulation is accompanied by unpredictability,opacity and ambiguity.Both have led to increased uncertainty in economic policies.In addition,under the trend of increasingly close global economic relations,the economic policies of other countries may also have an impact on China ’ s economy,such as trade disputes between China and the United States.Therefore,the government needs to consider internal and external factors to formulate policies,thereby further increasing the possibility of economic policy uncertainty rising.Based on this realistic background,a large number of scholars at home and abroad have begun to study the macro and micro effects of economic policy uncertainty.Specifically,economic policy uncertainty is a negative impact in most cases.At the macro level,it reduces the rate of economic growth,slows down the economic recession cycle,reduces labor employment,and disrupts the normal operation of the stock market.At the micro level,it reduces corporate capital.Invest,increase the difficulty of corporate financing,increase corporate financing costs,and worsen corporate asset allocation.Of course,although policy uncertainty has brought adverse impacts to most enterprises,it has also brought favorable opportunities to some enterprises,taking advantage of opportunities to increase innovation input and output,and seeking better development prospects.For the micro-effects caused by the uncertainty of economic policies,financial decisions such as investment and financing of enterprises are relatively obvious observable changes.In comparison,corporateinformation disclosure decisions are more hidden.In the information released by the company,although the financial statements have strict disclosure requirements and a standardized publishing format,there is still earnings management that is not easy to identify.The quality of the performance forecast information is also difficult to detect,and compared with the financial statement information,the company has greater discretion in the performance forecast information.Researching changes in economic policy uncertainty can better explore the company’s intentions.In addition to operational information,social responsibility information,as important non-operational information,supplements the content that operational information cannot pass.At the same time,the company also has sufficient space for independent decision-making,and changes in disclosure decisions also imply company goals.Based on the existing research results,this paper sorts out the relevant systems of information disclosure,explores the company’s right to freely adjudicate in information disclosure decisions,uses a combination of normative research and empirical research,and uses economic policy uncertainty as the starting point,Analyze the changes in company information disclosure from three perspectives:financial information disclosure,performance forecast information disclosure,and social responsibility information disclosure.Specifically,in terms of financial information,using sample data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018 to study the uncertainty of economic policies on the degree of company’s earnings management,differences in earnings management in different directions,and the probability of violation of financial information disclosure.Impact;in terms of performance forecast information,using sample data from Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018 to study the uncertainty of economic policies on the company ’s willingness to voluntarily disclose performance forecast,accuracy of performance forecast,accuracy of performance forecast,voluntary disclosure The impact of different types of performance forecast differences,performance forecast optimism bias probability,etc.;in terms of social responsibility information,using sample data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2017 to study the uncertainty of economic policies for the company’s voluntary social release The impact of the enthusiasm for the responsibility report,the quality of the disclosure of the social responsibility report,and the outlook for the rating of the social responsibility disclosure,the main conclusions are as follows:First,when the uncertainty of economic policies gradually increased,thecompany’s overall financial information disclosure performance was relatively positive.Specifically,in the overall sample,the uncertainty of economic policies has led to a decline in the company’s degree of earnings management,especially positive earnings management,that is,the quality of financial information disclosure has increased,and in addition,the possibility of violations of financial information disclosure by the company has also decreased.This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests that exclude multicollinearity,two-stage least squares regression,change data sources for economic policy uncertainty,change measurement models,and change key variable measurement methods.Then through the intermediary effect test model,it was found that the level of bank borrowing is an intermediate mechanism for economic policy uncertainty to affect the company’s earnings management and financial violation disclosure,and bank loan cost is only an intermediate path for economic policy uncertainty to affect company’s earnings management.And the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the company’s financial information disclosure is heterogeneous under different circumstances of the company’s internal governance level,institutional investor shareholding ratio,and surplus.Second,when the uncertainty of economic policies gradually increases,the enthusiasm of the company for voluntary disclosure of performance notices has increased significantly,and the accuracy and precision of all disclosed performance forecasts have also increased significantly;the uncertainty of economic policies has only increased the company’s voluntary release The enthusiasm of the good news forecast has no significant effect on the bad news forecast;the higher the uncertainty of economic policy,the more likely the company is to have an optimistic bias when forecasting,and this optimistic bias mainly exists in the good news forecast.The effect of this uncertainty in economic policy on the accuracy of performance forecasting is weakened when the nature of the forecasting is good news.After excluding multicollinearity,using the two-stage least squares method to alleviate endogenousness,changing data sources for economic policy uncertainty,changing regression methods,and changing performance forecast accuracy metrics,the conclusion remains robust.Then,through the intermediary effect test model,it was found that the analyst’s forecast accuracy is an intermediate mechanism that the uncertainty of economic policies affects the company’s voluntary disclosure of performance forecast enthusiasm,company performance forecast accuracy,and company performance forecast accuracy.The analyst’s forecast disagreement is onlyUncertainty in economic policies affects the intermediate path for companies to voluntarily issue performance forecasts.In addition,the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the company’s performance forecast information disclosure is heterogeneous under the conditions of industry competition and the number of analysts tracking.Third,when the uncertainty of economic policy is gradually increasing,corporate social responsibility information disclosure is also positive.Including the company’s willingness to voluntarily release social responsibility reports,the quality of social responsibility information disclosed by the company has improved significantly.Growth tends to be stable or negative.After conducting a series of robustness tests that exclude multiple colinearity,two-way fixed-effects models,two-stage least squares regression,replacement of data sources for economic policy uncertainty,and replacement of measurement methods,the conclusions remain unchanged.Then,through the intermediary effect test model,it was found that business sales have some intermediary effects in the uncertainty of economic policies that promote the company’s willingness to release social responsibility and improve the quality of social responsibility information.There are some intermediary effects in the social responsibility report.Moreover,the impact of economic policy uncertainty on corporate social responsibility information disclosure is heterogeneous under the circumstances of voluntary and regulatory compliance,the nature of the company’s property rights,the market system environment,and the company’s financial performance.According to the research results of this article,on the whole,under the macro background of increasing economic policy uncertainty,corporate bank borrowing levels have fallen,analysts ’forecast errors have increased,analysts’ forecast divergences have increased,and corporate operations The decline in sales and the decline in stock returns.Under the negative impact of this series of credit resource shocks,information environment shocks,aggregate demand shocks,and financial market shocks,the company weighed the pros and cons from a strategic perspective,and improved financial information disclosure and performance.The quality of advance notice information disclosure and social responsibility information disclosure,and at the same time increased the willingness to voluntarily disclose performance advance information and social responsibility information.Therefore,it should not be limited to the direct and intuitive results.It should be taken into account that the uncertainty of economic policy is not the driving factor that fundamentally improvesthe company’s level of information disclosure.The impact is likely to be transient.The economic shocks are weakening and gradually disappearing.In view of this,this article proposes the following policy recommendations:First,establish an expected mechanism for economic policies,strengthen global economic cooperation,and reduce the level of uncertainty in economic policies;And internal governance factors to promote the company ’s information disclosure quality to a high level.Third,increase the financial support and continuity of banks and other financial institutions for enterprises,and reduce the difficulty of financing caused by the uncertainty of economic policies;Fourth,improve the professionalism of analysts,take advantage of information intermediaries,and reduce the adverse impact of uncertain economic policies on the information environment.Fifth,re-evaluate and formulate company sales strategies,expand the company’s sales channels,and actively invest in research and development New products to mitigate economic policy uncertainty The impact of the demand.The possible contribution of this paper is to examine the company’s information disclosure from the external environment,examine the significant impact of uncertainty in economic policies,and explore the impact mechanism.Existing literatures tend to study the company’s information disclosure from internal factors,and less concern about the external policy environment,and even if it involves,it is mostly a review of established economic policies.From the perspective of the uncertainty of economic policies existing outside this article,it has enriched the relevant literature on external policies.