Transformations  in
Business & Economics

REGULATION ON STOCK SELLING BEHAVIOR OF LARGE SHAREHOLDERS AND SHARE PRICE STABILITY: A NATURAL EXPERIMENT IN CHINA'S SECURITY MARKETS
Xinxin Jing, Xiao Zhang, Tiesong Hong

ABSTRACT. Large shareholders of listed companies control a high proportion of holding-shares. They play a critical role in determining the development directions of companies and have access to inside information. Therefore, large shareholders can sell their shares at a high price to gain excess earnings. However, the capital market is a zero-sum game. The excess earnings of large shareholders are grabbed at the sacrifice of benefits of small shareholders and may also trigger drastic fluctuation of the share price. Governments have issued a series of rules in regulating the selling behavior (hereinafter referred to as the behavior) of large shareholders to protect small shareholders' interests and maintain share price stability. Nevertheless, the validity of regulations still has to be verified. In this study, key attention was paid to investigating the validity of the regulation on large shareholders' behavior (hereafter referred to as the regulation) and the influencing mechanism of the regulation on the share price. The latest rule, which was issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission on 26 May 2017, was used as the quasi-standard natural experiment. On the basis of the daily transaction data of China's stock markets in 2017, a fixed-effect model was constructed, and a propensity match score (PSM) method was further applied to evaluate the effect of the regulation on Chinese A-share market, as well as on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. Moreover, different influences of corporate governance on the effect of the regulation were explored. Results demonstrate that after controlling for the sample's self-selection bias problem, the regulation can stabilise the share price. The share price stability of Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets is enhanced significantly. In enterprises with a high percentage of ownership concentration, the regulation achieves a significant implementation effect that can inhibit stock price manipulation behaviors of large shareholders by taking advantage of control power. However, the implementation effect of the regulation is insignificant in enterprises with a low percentage of ownership concentration. The fluctuation of the share price of enterprises is also related to the internal financial indexes of enterprises. Enterprises with high profitability, low turnover rate, and low circulation market value have a stable share price. The Conclusions can provide beneficial references for the government to formulate effective rules for regulating the behaviors of large shareholders and for enterprises to perfect the internal governance structure .

KEYWORDS:  stock selling behavior regulation, stock price stability, PSM, stock selling behaviour of large shareholders.

JEL classification:  Q23, Q28, I31, O12, C3.