光华讲坛——社会名流与企业家论坛第5636期

主题： The Blackmail Effect of Media: Evidence from Chinese Firms

主讲人：应千伟教授

主持人：西南财经大学中国金融研究中心   王鹏教授

时间：2019年12月5日（周四）下午2:00

地点：西南财经大学柳林校格致楼618

主办单位：中国金融研究中心  科研处

主讲人简介：

应千伟，四川大学商学院会计学与公司金融系主任、教授、博士生导师，全国会计高端人才（学术类）后备人选，四川省学术和技术带头人后备人选，四川大学“双百人才工程”培育人选，四川大学青年杰出人才培育人选。美国MIT斯隆管理学院、美国华盛顿大学Foster商学院、美国明尼苏达大学Carlson管理学院访问学者。国家自然科学基金评审专家、教育部学位中心评审专家、四川省会计正高职称评审专家、《金融科学》杂志编委。曾获得四川省社会科学优秀成果奖、四川大学好未来优秀学者奖一等奖、四川大学唐立新优秀学者奖、四川大学五粮春青年教师优秀教学奖、四川大学优秀教师奖等。目前已在Management and Organization Review（SSCI）, Urban Studies (SSCI)，Accounting and Finance (SSCI), Journal of Contemporary China (SSCI), 《管理世界》、《管理科学学报》、《金融研究》、《世界经济》、《统计研究》、《南开管理评论》等国内外知名刊物发表论文五十余篇（其中SSCI论文14篇）并多次被《人大复印资料》和《中国社会科学文摘》等转。

内容提要：Media has its bright side by bringing corporate actions under the spotlight and serving as a watchdog for external corporate governance. However, as a profit-driven entity, media could also exhibit some dark side in pursuing their own interests. We investigate the dark side of media using a unique dataset of media reports on Chinese firms. Specifically, we categorize media reports into negative and non-negative tunes and examine media uses negative reports as threat to blackmail firms for higher corporate Public Relation (PR) expenditure. We find that lower PR spending is associated with more negative media coverage, suggesting the blackmail effect by media. This result is especially pronounced in non-SOEs, implying that the implicit government guarantees in state-owned enterprises (SOE) could potentially mitigate media blackmail. Further, we compare the impacts of market-oriented media versus government-controlled media, and document that the blackmail effect from both government-controlled media and market-oriented media is only evident in non-SOE firms. Taken together, this paper enriches the literature on media roles by documenting the media’s blackmail inclination to non-SOEs in China.

Keywords: Media; News coverage; Implicit government guarantees; Frauds; PR expenditure