This study finds that firms with major government customers have better information quality and, therefore, lower future stock price crash risks. Our main findings are robust to various tests accounting for endogeneity concerns, including propensity score matching analysis and entropy balancing method. We also conduct a difference-in-differences analysis based on a quasi-natural experiment that exogenously enhances government procurement contracts’ disclosure quality. Further analysis shows that the effects of government customers are more pronounced when traditional information intermediaries are weaker (i.e., firms with lower institutional ownership and analyst coverage, of smaller size, and audited by non-industry-specialized auditors). Consistent with government customers improving the information quality, we also find that firms with major government customers are less likely to have SEC-attributed restatements.

中文翻译：

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政府作为客户：探索政府客户对供应商公司信息质量的影响

本研究发现，拥有主要政府客户的公司具有更好的信息质量，因此未来股价崩盘的风险更低。我们的主要发现对于考虑内生性问题的各种测试是稳健的，包括倾向得分匹配分析和熵平衡方法。我们还基于一个外生提高政府采购合同披露质量的准自然实验进行了差异分析。进一步的分析表明，当传统信息中介机构较弱时（即机构所有权和分析师覆盖率较低、规模较小且由非行业专业审计师审计的公司），政府客户的影响更为明显。与政府客户一致提高信息质量，