An Empirical Analysis On The Peer Effect Of Earnings Forecast Of Chinese Listed Companies

The capital market is driven by information and information disclosure is the bridge that connecting management of listed companies and investors in the capital market,which directly affects the stable and healthy development of the capital market.In the new era,China’s macro economy is in urgent need of transformation.The registration system reform with the information disclosure as the core is the key to promote China’s capital market reform in the new era.In addition,information users in the capital market are no longer satisfied with the mandatory disclosure of historical accounting information,but pay more attention to the earnings forecast information released by listed companies in advance.Under the realistic background that all social parties pay more and more attention to the information disclosure,studying the influencing factors of promoting the performance forecast disclosure of listed companies in China will help enhance the transparency of listed companies and promote the further development of the capital market.Therefore,it has attracted more and more close attention from the academic circles.In the research on the influencing factors of earnings forecast,there are few studies to analyze whether the release of earnings forecast is affected by other firms in the same industry or region.Based on the research on peer effects in domestic and foreign academic circles,this paper introduces peer effects into the study of earnings forecast,that is,to study the peer effects of earnings forecast of listed companies in China.This paper uses the data of A-share non-financial listed companies in China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2015 to 2019 as the research sample.Based on the perspective of the frequency of the disclosure of earnings forecast,this paper conducts an empirical analysis on the peer effect of listed companies’ earnings forecast behavior on the basis of signaling theory,social learning theory and dynamic competition theory.This paper also constructs models to test the existence of the peer effects of earnings forecast from two dimensions of industry and region,and studies the influence of property rights and top-management-team education on these two peer effects respectively.This paper draws the following conclusions: First,there are industry peer effects and regional peer effects in the disclosure of earnings forecast of listed companies in China.That is to say,when the average number of earnings forecast issued by peers in the same industry or region increases,the managers of own-firm will correspondingly increase the disclosure frequency of their own earnings forecast for the purpose of information learning and maintaining competitive advantage.Second,the nature of property rights has a significant impact on the industry and regional peer effects of earnings forecast.In non-state-owned firms,the frequency of earnings forecast disclosure is more significantly affected by peer firms in the same industry or region.Third,the top-management-team education has a significant positive moderating effect on the industry peer effects of earnings forecast,but has no significant effect on the regional peer effects.The conclusions of this paper not only enrich the relevant research on the influencing factors of the frequency of earnings forecast disclosure and the peer effects,but also provide some suggestions for corporate managers to make decisions and improve the information disclosure system of capital market.On the one hand,for firms lacking information disclosure experience,they can appropriately refer to the behavior of peer firms when issuing earnings forecast,and make their own disclosure decisions based on the disclosure level of peer firms.In addition,high-quality firms with strong influence should timely and actively release earnings forecast on the condition that they do not disclose competitive information of firms,so as to alleviate information asymmetry between enterprises and investors and improve the information quality of capital market.On the other hand,the regulatory authorities should consider the direct impact of policies and regulations on the disclosure of earnings forecast when making relevant regulations.Besides,they should also take into account the indirect influence of the interactive communication of information among peer firms as well as the influence of the property rights and top-management-team education on the peer effects of earnings forecast,so as to further optimize the information disclosure system.