This study examines whether the contemporaneous stock price crash risk of peer firms within the same industry affects the focal firm’s subsequent real earnings management.
Prior research has examined whether a focal firm’s own crash risk constrain...
This study examines whether the contemporaneous stock price crash risk of peer firms within the same industry affects the focal firm’s subsequent real earnings management.
Prior research has examined whether a focal firm’s own crash risk constrains its future real earnings management. Based on this literature, this study extends the analysis to peer firms, focusing on whether an information transfer effect arises from their crash risk. The empirical results are as follows. First, both the focal firm’s crash risk and peer firms’ crash risk exhibit negative associations with the focal firm’s subsequent real earnings management. Second, we do not find that industry competition increases the impact of peer firms’ stock price crash risk. Third, when distinguishing peer firms based on their position within the industry, the amplifying effect of industry competition appears only among firms with large market capitalization. This finding suggests that firms with larger market capitalizations exert a greater influence on the capital market, which is also reflected in the information transfer effects.
While prior research documents that capital markets discipline managerial myopic decision making from an ex-post perspective, this study shows that managers also learn from the stock price crash risk of peer firms. Accordingly, capital markets also function as an external governance mechanism from an ex-ante perspective. We encourage future research to explore and propose additional ex-ante internal and external control systems and monitoring mechanisms that may cause real earnings management