Disclosure and market consequences of firm-specific news announcements in the emerging market of China

A quality corporate disclosure environment is vital for an efficient market. The ultimate purpose of this thesis is to study the information environment of the Chinese capital market. There are different types of participants playing equally important roles in the smooth functioning of the Chinese capital market. I attempt to study the information issue from three different perspectives using three separate essays.; In the first essay, my focus is on a general information user level, looking at what information is available in the capital market as disclosed by firms. My first essay analyzes the firm-specific news announcements for Chinese firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges with foreign ownership (firms issuing B shares) to gain an understand of the current information disclosure environment in the China stock market. I establish a news database which permits an examination of the distributional characteristics of the news items by categories, firm nature and timing. This essay also reports a positive relation between frequency of news disclosure and the total market capitalization, the total asset and the percentage of tradable share of a firm.; In my second essay, my focus is on financial analysts; examining the role of information disclosure and the accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts. Using all the Chinese firms included in the I/B/E/S files, I evaluate the predictive accuracy of analysts' earnings forecasts. Apart from examining the relative forecast errors of the analyst vis-à-vis a naïve forecast model as well as studying the determinants and explanatory variables of the differential analysts' forecast errors between groups of firms, regression analysis is also conducted to evaluate such determinants.; In my third essay, I recognize that investors at large react differently to information disclosed and my focus is on the dispersion of opinion among financial analysts. I examine the role of such differences in opinion in relation to the cross section of future stock returns in the Chinese capital market. Results show that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts' earnings earn lower return than otherwise similar stocks. Results also suggest that a more correct interpretation of dispersion in analysts' forecast is as a proxy for investors' opinion differences about a stock rather than as a proxy for risk.; Apart from raising the awareness on the importance of quality corporate disclosure in the smooth functioning of a capital market, this study provides evidence supporting the importance of a transparent information environment for analysts' earnings forecast accuracy and how opinion dispersion among financial analysts and investors at large affects subsequent stock returns. Allowing investors a thorough understanding of the Chinese capital market mitigates misconception and can help foreign funds and local investors to make investment decisions in the China capital market.