The rapid growth of the private sector in China in recent decades has resulted in a large number of capital-hungry private sector firms. An increasing number of these firms choose to raise equity capital on international exchanges, which typically have stronger disclosure, corporate governance, and investor protection regulations. In light of international investors' and regulators' concerns about the corporate finance practice of China's private sector firms, particularly regarding the integrity of their reported earnings, we investigate whether these firms aggressively manipulate their accounts by examining those listed in Hong Kong, commonly known as P-chips. We find systematic evidence that P-chips engage in more earnings management and other corporate misbehaviors than their counterparts in Hong Kong. We posit and provide evidence consistent with cross-jurisdictional enforcement difficulty as a possible explanation for P-chips' questionable practices, and discuss its implications.

The traditional view of equity analysts is that they are a source of new information about future cash flows. We broaden this view by demonstrating that equity analysts are also a substantive source of new information about priced risk. In particular, we document that, when announced, changes in analyst risk ratings distinctly and significantly affect equity returns, and are generally followed by significant changes in Fama–French factor loadings. Also, while less frequent than credit rating changes, equity risk rating changes are timelier, and with a larger overall stock price impact than credit rating changes.

We examine the determinants and the informativeness of financial analysts' risk ratings using a large sample of research reports issued by Salomon Smith Barney, now Citigroup, over the period 1997–2003. We find that the cross‐sectional variation in risk ratings is largely explained by variables commonly viewed as measures of risk, such as idiosyncratic risk, size, book‐to‐market, and leverage. In addition, earnings‐based measures of risk, such as earnings quality and accounting losses, also contribute to explaining the cross‐sectional variation in the risk ratings. Finally, we document that the risk ratings can be used to predict future return volatility after controlling for other predictors of future volatility. We conclude that analysts play an important role as providers of information about investment risk.