This is a past event
Political Connections and Media Bias: Evidence from China
Dr Aoran Zhang joined the Division of Finance, Risk and Banking of Nottingham University Business School in 2020. He obtained his Ph.D. in Finance from John Molson School of Business of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
Dr Zhang will be discussing the effects of firm’s political connections on media bias using a large sample of corporate news articles on publicly listed non-SOEs in China. We document that politically connected non-SOEs receive more favourable news coverage. The results are robust to instrumental variable analysis. Furthermore, the political connections – media tone relationship is strengthened in provinces where non-SOEs’ chairmen or CEOs worked or were born and the newspapers are located. Our difference-in-difference analysis shows that local media tone increases before the turnover of provincial officials and politically-connected non-SOEs and non-politically-connected non-SOEs behave differently around the turnover of provincial officials. Finally, using two additional difference-in-difference analyses, we show that politically connected non-SOEs have more positive tone in news articles after CSRC violation announcements and before they tap into the public debt market. Our findings highlight the social costs of rent-seeking by politically connected firms.
- Speaker
- Dr Aoran Zhang
- Contact
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For full details please contact Yuan Yuan Zhao, y.zhao@abdn.ac.uk