Strategic Difference Of Listed Companies,Analyst Coverage And Accounting Information Quality

In recent years,with the continuous improvement of economic level,the capacity of China's capital market is also expanding rapidly.As an important part of the capital market,the number and volume of listed companies are constantly expanding.In many listed companies,investors need to make investment decisions by reading and analyzing the accounting information of the company.However,in order to beautify business performance,smooth profits or other purposes,listed companies often take advantage of accounting standards to manipulate the financial statements.Therefore,judging the quality of accounting information has become a necessary process before making an investment.With the increasingly fierce competition among companies,how to choose the strategy suitable for the company has become the key of success.As the highest-level decision of a company,strategy affects many aspects of the company's characteristics,such as flexibility of organizational structure,ability to change faster and so on.Not only that,but also strategic difference can essentially lead to difference in business risks,information asymmetry,and thus lead to difference in the quality of accounting information.Operating risk makes the company have reasons to beautify and smooth profits,the high degree of information asymmetry gives the company the condition of accounting manipulation without being detected.Therefore,this thesis assumes that the strategic difference is negatively correlated with the quality of accounting information,including reliability and relevance.As an important intermediary of capital market,analysts play a significant role in collecting information,alleviating information asymmetry,and carrying out external supervision.Therefore,this thesis assumes that analyst coverage can alleviate the negative correlation between strategic difference and accounting information quality.The structure of this thesis is as follows.The first part is an introduction of the whole thesis.In this part,this thesis mainly introduces the background of the study,then classifies the significances of the study into the theoretical and practical significances.Next,it defines the main concepts involved in the study and introduces the methods used in the thesis.Finally,it clarifies the framework of the study and refines the innovative points of this thesis.The second part is literature review.Based on the research carried out,this thesis reviews and summarizes the literature related to strategic difference,analyst coverage and accounting information quality,and explores the research value and theoretical basis of this study by reviewing the research methods and conclusions of other scholars.The third part is the theoretical basis and research hypothesis.Through the analysis of agency theory,information asymmetry theory and resource dependence theory,the theoretical basis of this thesis is abstracted,and the hypotheses based on strategic difference,analyst coverage and accounting information quality are put forward.The fourth part is empirical variables and models.With the help of CSMAR database,this thesis defines the explaining variable,the explained variable,the regulatory variable and the control variable properly,and establishes some empirical models.The fifth part is empirical analysis and results.Through the analysis of the research data in the sample,the data characteristics and correlation characteristics are obtained,and then the multiple regression analysis is carried out to verify the hypothesis in this paper.In view of the inadequacies in the study,this paper makes further analysis.Finally,the robustness of this study is tested by multiple robustness analysis methods.The last part is research conclusions,shortcomings and policy recommendations.Through the empirical test,this thesis verifies the hypotheses and puts forward the research conclusions,then summarizes the shortcomings in the study,and puts forward policy recommendations to all parties according to the research conclusions.In view of the phenomenon that strategic difference has an impact on the characteristics of listed companies,based on the sample of A-share listed companies,this thesis draws the following conclusions:(1)There is a significant negative correlation between the high strategic difference and the quality of accounting information of listed companies;(2)Under the condition of the high number of analyst coverage,it can effectively alleviate the low quality of accounting information caused by the high strategic difference.In further analysis,by supplementing some of the deficiencies of the study,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)High degree of strategic difference will increase the degree of accrual earnings management and reduce the reliability of accounting information.This conclusion is true no matter the accrual earnings management is positive or negative.(2)Under different property rights,analyst coverage has different degrees of mitigating the low quality of accounting information brought by high strategic difference,which is related to the risks and pressures faced by companies with different property rights.Specifically,analyst coverage has a more significant mitigating effect in non-state-owned enterprises.The innovative points of this thesis can be concluded as follows:(1)This thesis combines the contents of management science-company strategy theory and accounting science-accounting information quality and integrates the theoretical knowledge of the two disciplines to comprehensively reflect the company's behaviors and results;(2)In previous studies,most of the researches on accounting information quality focused on the theoretical level,and this thesis uses the data of listed companies to conduct empirical research.The combination of theory and empirical research makes the argument more credible;(3)In the past studies,auditing factors were often chosen in the study of external governance,while the important external governance method of analyst coverage was ignored.This thesis chooses analyst coverage as a moderating variable,which has a practical and theoretical significance.