Visible hands versus invisible hands: Default risk and stock price crashes in China

Abstract

This paper revisits the default-crash risk relation in the context of China. We find that firms with higher default risk have lower stock price crash risk at both monthly and yearly frequencies. To identify the causal effect, we use the first-ever default event in China’s onshore bond market in 2014 as an exogenous shock to the strength of implicit guarantees. The negative relation arises from the active involvement of the government before 2014 and creditors after 2014 in corporate governance. Consistent with the external scrutiny mechanism, the impact of default risk on stock price crashes is stronger in situations where creditors are more likely to engage in active monitoring (i.e., firms with higher liquidation costs, lower liquidation value, higher levels of information asymmetry, and non-state-owned firms), with these effects being primarily observed in the post-2014 period. Overall, our study highlights the role of the “invisible hand” in the absence of the “visible hand”.