The Impact of Firm‐Level Illiquidity on Crash Risk and the Role of Media Independence: International Evidence

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of firm-level illiquidity on stock price crash risk by employing a sample of 21,986 firms across 36 countries spanning the years 1997 to 2007. In doing so, the role of media independence in shaping this impact is also examined. The empirical results suggest that stock illiquidity is significantly and positively associated with firm-level crash risk. Furthermore, the positive association between illiquidity and crash risk has been mitigated in countries with independent media, characterized by a lower level of state ownership and a higher level of press freedom, in addition to the reduction effect of media independence per se on crash risk. Our main conclusions remain valid after taking into account the endogeneity issues and various robustness tests.

The illiquidity network of stocks in China's market crash

“…Stoll et al suggested that stock attributes such as market value, volume and volatility can significantly reshape the stock illiquidity [15,16,17]. On the other hand, An et al found that macro economic factors such as media independence, policy uncertainty, default risk and funding conditions have a remarkable impact on illiquidity [18,19,20,21]. These evidences imply that stocks can be well profiled in terms of illiquidity and more importantly, external shocks to the market can also be absorbed and thus sensed through illiquidity.…”