Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment

This paper investigates how environmental regulation and action affect analyst behaviour. Exploiting staggered enactment of low carbon city (LCC) initiatives in a difference-in-differences (DiD) setting, we observe that analyst forecast accuracy (dispersion) is significantly lower (greater) for clie...

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Main Authors: Cao, June, Li, W., Bilokha, A.
Format: Journal Article
Published: 2022
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/88981
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author Cao, June
Li, W.
Bilokha, A.
author_facet Cao, June
Li, W.
Bilokha, A.
author_sort Cao, June
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description This paper investigates how environmental regulation and action affect analyst behaviour. Exploiting staggered enactment of low carbon city (LCC) initiatives in a difference-in-differences (DiD) setting, we observe that analyst forecast accuracy (dispersion) is significantly lower (greater) for client firms headquartered in cities covered by the LCC pilot programme, especially among firms with a low-quality information environment. The LCC effort affects analyst behaviour via increased firm risk and reduced earnings predictability, causing enhanced site visits and coverage. The results are stronger in cities with more rigorous enforcement and regulation intensity, for private firms with high business complexity and in heavily polluting industries. Results are robust to DiD models with entropy balancing matching, placebo tests, parallel trend tests, and a battery of fixed effects. Collectively, they reveal that environmental regulation has real impacts on analyst forecast behaviour.
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institution Curtin University Malaysia
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-889812022-08-15T03:56:02Z Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment Cao, June Li, W. Bilokha, A. This paper investigates how environmental regulation and action affect analyst behaviour. Exploiting staggered enactment of low carbon city (LCC) initiatives in a difference-in-differences (DiD) setting, we observe that analyst forecast accuracy (dispersion) is significantly lower (greater) for client firms headquartered in cities covered by the LCC pilot programme, especially among firms with a low-quality information environment. The LCC effort affects analyst behaviour via increased firm risk and reduced earnings predictability, causing enhanced site visits and coverage. The results are stronger in cities with more rigorous enforcement and regulation intensity, for private firms with high business complexity and in heavily polluting industries. Results are robust to DiD models with entropy balancing matching, placebo tests, parallel trend tests, and a battery of fixed effects. Collectively, they reveal that environmental regulation has real impacts on analyst forecast behaviour. 2022 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/88981 10.1016/j.jfs.2022.101042 restricted
spellingShingle Cao, June
Li, W.
Bilokha, A.
Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment
title Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment
title_full Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment
title_fullStr Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment
title_full_unstemmed Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment
title_short Low-Carbon City Initiatives and Analyst Behaviour: A Quasi-Natural Experiment
title_sort low-carbon city initiatives and analyst behaviour: a quasi-natural experiment
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/88981