Empirical Research On The Impact Of Security Analyst Coverage On The Information Disclosure Of Listed Companies

With the rapid development of capital market in our country,the scale of the security analysts is expanding.As the information intermediary on the capital market,security analysts have high independence and professional analysis ability,making their earnings forecast report more information content and investment value.As a result,earnings forecast made by security analysts not only become the basis for investors to make decisions,but also have been the measure of corporate performance.In the capital market environment of our country,the effect of security analysts on the firm's activities is not only one,but exists two opposite effect: "monitoring effect" and "pressure effect".Based on this research background,this thesis discusses the impact of the different effects by security analyst coverage on the information disclosure of listed companies.Firstly,this thesis reviews literature of the impact of security analyst coverage on the information disclosure of listed companies,based on the efficient market hypothesis,information asymmetry theory,principal-agent theory,signaling theory and cognitive evaluation theory.Combined with the information disclosure regulation of our country,this thesis respectively constructs the "monitoring effect" and "pressure effect" theoretical analysis framework of the impact on the characteristics of management earnings forecasts and information quality of annual report.Secondly,this thesis analyzes the impact of security analyst coverage on the information disclosure of listed companies by using a set of cross-sectional time series data of companies listed on Shanghai A-stock Market and Shenzhen A-stock Market over the period of 2012 to 2016 with OLS regression and 2SLS two-stage regression.Finally,empirical results show as follows:(1)"monitoring effect" and "pressure effect" by security analyst coverage both exist in the characteristics of management earnings forecast.From the perspective of the disclosure behavior of management earnings forecast,"pressure effect" plays a leading role in the timeliness and precision of management earnings forecast.However,in terms of the disclosure result of management earnings forecast,"monitoring effect" plays a leading role in the accuracy of management earnings forecast.(2)"monitoring effect" by security analyst coverage mainly exists in the information quality of annual report.But the pressure of security analyst earnings forecast may stimulate excessive earnings management behavior of listed companies and induce more hidden information risk of earnings management,which reflects a certain degree of "pressure effect" by security analyst coverage.This thesis constructs a research framework including "monitoring effect" and "pressure effect" by security analyst coverage.Combined with the different stages of information disclosure,research conclusions clarify the impact and role of security analysts and enrich the research of external governance functions of security analyst coverage.In addition,it also has important guiding significance on improving management earnings forecast regulation,promoting the healthy growth of the security analyst industry and broadening channels of information disclosure of listed companies.