Can Inquiry Letters Make R&D Information Pricing More Effective? Evidence from China

There are information transfer motives and earnings management motives for the disclosure of R&D expense information. These two motives contradict each other, which can cause distortion of corporate R&D expense information and lead to mispricing of R&D information. In this paper, we investigate the market reaction to R&D expense inquiry letters (hereafter, RDILs) and their impact mechanism from the perspective of correcting R&D information mispricing by using Chinese A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2019. We find that RDILs have a significantly negative market reaction, suggesting that they have additional information content. Mechanism analyses indicate that this information content is affected by the inquiry letter characteristics and the R&D characteristics of the inquired firm. The findings of this paper have implications for how developing countries can use capital markets to stimulate corporate innovation, and for the establishment of proactive inquiry mechanisms to address the mispricing of innovation information. Exchanges in other countries should consider their use.