Excess perks and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

Abstract

We investigate the impact of excess perk consumption on crash risk in state-owned enterprises in China. To enjoy excess perks, executives in state-owned enterprises have an incentive to withhold bad news for extended periods, leading to higher future stock price crash risk. Consistent with this assertion, we find a positive correlation between excess perks and crash risk. The findings are robust to the inclusion of other determinants of crash risk identified in the literature, such as earnings management, conditional conservatism, and firm-level corporate governance mechanisms. The results still hold after accounting for possible endogeneity issues using a two-stage least squares estimation...