Investment banks and issuers of Chinese domestic IPOs became fully responsible for IPO offer prices only on June 10, 2009. Before this regulatory reform, the optimistic bias in post-IPO earnings forecasts is highly comparable across affiliated and unaffiliated analysts. Afterward, the forecasts of affiliated analysts are 33 percentage points more positively distorted on average. In the first 90 days after an IPO, this relative forecast bias even increases to 63 percentage points and enlarges further when the issuer׳s stock price drops in the aftermarket. Affiliated analysts distort especially their forecasts for fiscal years further away from the forecast release date.

Using a sample of A-listed companies from 2010 to 2020, this paper investigates how investor–firm interactions on Easy Interaction and E-interaction affect corporate investment efficiency measured as investment-to-Tobin's Q sensitivity. The empirical results show that investor–firm interactions are positively correlated with corporate investment efficiency. Possible economic channels include information asymmetry and corporate governance channels. Moreover, investor–firm interactions have a greater impact on firms with fewer financial constraints, higher stock price efficiency, higher media coverage, and higher analyst coverage. When interaction sentiment is more positive, interaction quality is higher, and the topic pertains to technology research and development, the impact of investor–firm interactions is also more pronounced. The main conclusion still holds after adopting a series of endogeneity tests and robustness tests.

Using an international sample of 38 countries, we find that firms located in countries experiencing greater socioeconomic damage from extreme climate events have higher implied costs of equity capital. This finding is attributed to heightened operational uncertainty, greater information asymmetry, and intensified agency conflicts that arise in the wake of extreme climate events. The relation is stronger for firms that derive substantial revenue from domestic markets, operate in climate-vulnerable industries, or are closely held by domestic institutional investors. The effect also varies across countries and is concentrated in markets characterized by low transparency or limited integration into the global financial market. While extreme climate events negatively influence firm performance and valuation, they raise corporate awareness of climate risk.