信息优势还是利益冲突:关联分析师盈余预测行为研究——基于股权质押的经验证据

Information Superiority or Interest Conflicts:The Effect of Share Pledge on Affiliated Analysts’Earnings Forecasts

本文将因隶属券商开展股权质押业务与上市公司形成关联关系的分析师(分析师-券商-股权质押公司)界定为关联分析师,并在此基础上系统地考察关联分析师的盈余预测行为。研究发现,关联分析师的盈余预测偏差更大、精度更低,这一盈余预测行为并未因信息优势和其他关联关系剔除而改善,且与股权质押类型、融资资金去向无关,表明关联分析师因利益冲突发布了乐观性盈余预测报告,研究结论支持利益冲突假说。而且,关联分析师的利益冲突行为在股权质押率高、券商风险管理能力较差时更为突出。股权质押影响关联分析师利益冲突的作用路径是分析师私有信息获取和券商业务拓展需求,导致关联分析师与股权质押公司、隶属券商间的双重利益冲突。本文从质押权人视角丰富了股权质押经济后果研究文献,研究结论有助于增进分析师盈余预测行为的理解。

This paper studies the behaviour of earnings forecasts of affiliated analysts,whose brokers are pledgees of listed firms and related to share pledge firms.Using the data from 2013 to 2017,we find that the earnings forecasts issued by affiliated analysts are less accurate as they tend to issue biased research reports on share pledge firms,and the finding supports the hypothesis of interest conflicts.Moreover,the interest conflicts behaviour of affiliated analysts is more significant in the sample with high equity pledge ratio and poor risk management ability of securities companies.The impact of share pledge on interest conflict of affiliated analysts starts from affiliated analysts’need to acquire private information from share pledge firms and help their securities companies thus resulting in the double interest conflicts that affiliated analysts face with share pledge firms and affiliated securities companies respectively.Overall,this study contributes to the researches on the economic consequences of share pledge,and helps us better understand the earnings forecast behaviour under the interest conflict from the perspective of share pledge.