2018年我国正式成立科创板，并实行注册制试点。注册制改革坚持以信息披露为核心，遵循真实、准确、完整的原则。相比其他板块，科创板发行人在招股说明书中需要披露更多私有信息和行业信息，意味着市场参与者将更了解市场情况，同行业公司更了解自己的竞争对手。已有研究发现，科创板公司招股说明书的信息披露水平得到提升，并且科创板市场定价效率显著提升、价格发现功能显著优化。但是尚未有研究讨论科创板是否会通过改善行业信息环境而对同行业的其他板块上市公司产生影响。在这种背景下，本文利用科创板注册制试点的自然实验，缓解了“同行效应”领域研究中普遍存在的内生性，探寻了信息披露与同行业公司投资行为、资源配置效率、信息披露质量、投资者反应等的因果关系，全面考察了科创板注册制改革对同行业公司的溢出作用。本文的实证研究发现，科创板企业的信息披露会对同行业公司的研发投入有积极影响，并且随着科创板公司招股说明书数量的增加、信息丰富度的增加以及数字信息的增多而加强；同时，同行业公司的新增固定资产投资减少，而投资效率增加，过度投资得到抑制，投资不足有所缓解，说明资本市场的资源配置效率得到了改善。其次，科创板公司的信息披露对同行业公司的年报可读性存在正向的溢出作用，公司希望加强自身的信号作用，以及投资者对公司的信息需求是这一溢出效应发挥作用的主要原因，并且科创板对同行业公司投资者的信息获取和降低信息不对称有积极作用，同行业公司受到的投资者关注度增加，股票流动性增加。最后，科创板可以改善同行业公司的会计信息可比性，而且当科创板公司的审核问询轮次越多、问询问题总数越多，涉及会计相关问题比例越高的情况下，对同行业公司的会计可比性作用越大，信息需求的作用、科创板公司知识溢出作用、同行业的竞争压力，是产生作用的原因，从投资者的角度，科创板还提高了会计盈余与市场反应的相关性。注册制改革使得整个行业开始迈向信息共同体，这启示上市公司要树立行业集体意识，加强自身信息披露的质量，管理层要借助行业内和同行业公司更丰富的信息，提高自身运行的效率和质量；监管者在监管方面要综合考虑科创板公司对其他公司产生的影响，在政策制定上要引导行业内发挥协同作用，形成良性竞争；投资者要积极获取和有效利用公司和行业信息，也要对我国上市公司和资本市场未来的信息环境、运行效率提高信心。
China established the Sci-Tech Innovation (STAR) board and launched a pilot program called the registration system reform. The core of the registration system reform is information disclosure, with the principal of veracity, accuracy, and completeness. Compared to other boards, firms from the STAR board are required to disclose more private information and industrial information in their prospectuses. With the information disclosed by STAR board firms, peer firms can have more knowledge and better understand of their competitors and the whole industry. Previous studies demonstrate that STAR board listed firms have better information disclosure quality in their prospectus, and the pricing and market pricing efficiency have improved in the STAR board, indicating that the information environment is enhanced in the industry. However, little is known about the impact of STAR board on peer firms from other boards through improved information environment in the industry. Using the registration system reform as a natural experiment to alleviate the endogenous issue which is common in the study of peer effect, this paper investigates the causal effects of information disclosure on peer firms’ investment strategy, investment efficiency, quality of information disclosure, and investors’ response, and conduct a comprehensive program evaluation of the spillover effects of registration system reform on peer firms.In the empirical studies, we find that the information disclosure of STAR board firms has a significantly positive effect on peer firms’ R&D investment, and the effect gets enhanced with the number of prospectuses, the amount of information, and the quantitative information in the prospectuses. In the meanwhile, peer firms invest less in fixed assets and get more efficient investments. They significantly reduce over-investments and alleviate under-investments which indicates that the resource allocation efficiency gets improved in the capital market. Secondly, the information disclosure of STAR board firms has a significantly positive spillover effect on peer firms’ readability of annual reports. The main reasons driving this effect are firms’ signaling expectations and investors’ demand for information. Additionally, we find that firms attract more attention from investors and stock liquidity improves, as investors get more accessed to firms’ information and the information asymmetry reduced. Finally, the registration system reform improves the accounting comparability of peer firms, and the effect is more prominent when STAR board firms get more comment letters, more questions, and higher proportion of accounting-related questions in the common letters during the IPO process. This spillover effect is attributed to demand for information, knowledge spillover, and competing pressure. From the perspective of investors, the registration system reform increases the correlation between earnings and market reaction of peer firms.The registration system reform makes the industry to form a community with a shared information, of which every single firm need to be aware. Firms should improve their quality of information disclosure, and managers can improve the quality and efficiency of their firms with the help of more peer firms’ information. The regulators should take into consideration the spillover effect of each single firm when regulating, and policy makers should lead the firms in the same industry to cooperate and make benign competition. The investors can make better use of information of firms and industries, and should be confident of the future of listed firms and capital market in China.
