Abstract:

Reducing violations by listed companies is the cornerstone of ensuring the effective operation of the capital market. This paper examines the effect of transportation infrastructure upgrading on corporate violations and its mechanism. It is found that the opening of high–speed rail significantly reduces corporate violations, and this effect is mainly reflected in firms with more space for violations, state-owned enterprises, and firms with fierce competition in the industry. After constructing the “minimum spanning tree" instrumental variable to overcome the endogeneity problem and con- ducting robustness tests such as parallel trend, the above conclusion still holds. The effect of the opening of high-speed rail on corporate violations comes from both the improvement of internal information transparency and the improvement of external governance environment. In particular, the opening of high-speed rail not only facilitates the monitoring by traditional external agents such as analysts and auditors, but also promotes off–site monitoring by the media at the same time.

Key words:

high-speed rail, corporate violations, information asymmetry, external governance