Media Coverage and the Cross Section of Stock Returns: The Chinese Evidence
Using hand collected news headlines for a large sample of listed firms in China over a period of 2000 2015, we investigate the cross sectional relation between media coverage and stock returns. Our results document that no media coverage stocks earn 55 basis points a month higher than stocks that are featured in the media. This result is robust after controlling for common risk factors and is not driven by short run return reversals. Further analysis provides evidence to support the investor recognition hypothesis, suggesting that mass media may play an incremental role in providing a supplement to traditional channels of information dissemination. Therefore, results in this paper are of interests to both investors and regulators on drivers of stock returns.