Abstract We investigate whether pledgee competition affects the disclosure choice of firms whose controlling shareholders pledge their shares. We find that pledgee competition is positively related to pledge firms’ annual report tone management. This positive relationship is stronger for pledge firms with lower credit quality and non-state-owned enterprise pledge firms. Further corroborating our results, higher pledgee competition increases the future crash risk of pledge firms. Collectively, our results suggest that competition pressure induces pledgees to lower their monitoring incentives to remain competitive in the marketplace, thus leading to pledge firms’ bad news hoarding behavior.

中文翻译：

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质押竞争，战略披露和未来的崩溃风险

摘要我们研究质押竞争是否影响控股股东质押股票的公司的披露选择。我们发现质押竞争与质押公司的年度报告基调管理成正相关。对于信用质量较低的质押公司和非国有企业质押公司而言，这种正向关系更为牢固。进一步证实我们的结果，更高的质押竞争会增加质押公司未来的崩溃风险。总体而言，我们的结果表明，竞争压力促使质押者降低其监测动机，以保持其在市场中的竞争力，从而导致质押公司的坏消息ho积行为。