Do foreign investors crowd out sell-side analysts? Evidence from China

This paper examines whether foreign investors (FIs) affect the information production of analysts. Based on China's stock market, we find that FIs significantly reduce analysts’ coverage. Such negative association is more pronounced in firms with a high level of governance and information disclosure and varies with analyst characteristics. We also identify two possible economic mechanisms: the information channel and the governance channel. Further tests suggest that as FIs crowd out analysts, the number of research reports and brokerage site visits decreased, but analyst forecast accuracy improved, indicating that the demand and supply of information are generally in equilibrium. We further address the endogeneity issue using a change-on-change analysis and a quasi-natural experiment, the Shanghai–Hong Kong Stock Connect (S-HKSC), and the results still hold. Overall, our results present evidence of potential information production by FIs, providing policy implications and highlighting the positive effect of China's open-door policy in capital markets.