我国财经媒体报道偏差的诱因及经济后果问题研究

From both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, this project investigates the economic causes and consequences of the bias of financial media in China. Theoretically, government, clients of advertising business, and institutional investors could all induce the bias from the supply as well as the demand side. Such bias further impacts the media’s informativeness and the effectiveness of their role in corporate governance. Empirically, we leverage on special arrangements in Chinese capital markets such as designation of specific media firms by public companies for their information disclosure and the mandatory requirement for public companies to make clarification announcements in case of abnormal stock price movements to provide evidence for the hypotheses based on the theoretical construct. The project could deepen our understanding on the bias issues in financial news press of emerging economies. Methodologically, the project takes advantage of the peculiar institutional arrangements in China to develop two key empirical proxies including the advertising income and information originality to measure media firms’ economic incentives. Compared to those similar ones used in the literature, these new proxies significantly reduce the potential noise and measurement errors, which should help produce more rigorous conclusions. By incorporating media firms’ coverage bias in the analysis, this project further enriches the relevant international literature. Finally, the evidence and conclusions of this project carry important implications for regulators in setting policies for media firms and for investors to better decipher the information in the news press.

本项目从理论和实证两个方面研究我国资本市场财经媒体报道偏差的诱因及经济后果问题。理论上，本项目基于供给和需求两个视角，分析了政府行为、客户广告、机构投资者三个媒体偏差诱因，进一步对上述偏差如何影响媒体报道的信息有用性和公司治理有用性进行分析。实证上，借助我国资本市场特殊的制度特征（包括上市公司信息披露指定媒体、上市公司澄清公告等），本项目对上述理论预期进行实证检验。本项目的完成可在国际层面上加深学术界对新兴市场财经媒体偏差问题的认识。同时，本项目借助特殊制度背景构造媒体广告收入以及信息原创性的度量指标，可规避现有文献在上述两个变量上存在的计量误差，提供更为严谨的研究结论。另外，将媒体报道的选择性偏差纳入媒体作用的分析框架，本项目可在国际层面上丰富有关媒体作用的相关文献；最后，本项目的完成可为监管部门制定媒体监管规范以及投资者解读媒体报道提供经验数据参考。

本项目从理论和实证两个方面研究我国资本市场财经媒体报道偏差的诱因及经济后果问题。本项目分析认为，公司可以通过财经媒体传递公开信息和私有信息到市场中，提供会计数字之外的软信息，并通过媒体转载将信息扩散，最终改善公司信息环境，提高资产定价效率。但是，也有一些研究否认了媒体的信息有效性和治理有效性，认为媒体出于经济动机、政治动机从而存在报道偏差。因此，本项目利用中国资本市场的经验证据，检验了财经媒体对资本市场信息环境的影响。具体而言，本项目研究发现，财经媒体的深度报道有助于公司信息对外传递，并且财经媒体嵌入公司社会关系网络程度不同，其报道和传递的内容也有所不同；研究还发现分析师吸引力会影响其媒体曝光度，进而影响其对投资者的信息传递效率。此外，本项目还对上市公司的关系网络和事务所审计行为，产能过剩与审计治理，以及财政预算软约束、棘轮效应与政府会计治理效能等其他由课题延伸的相关主题展开研究，取得了一系列成果。本项目不仅在理论上丰富了有关媒体作用的研究文献，还为监管部门制定媒体监管规范以及投资者解读媒体报道提供经验数据参考。