Risk-taking, information opacity and stock price synchronicity

Based on the theory of irrational behavior hypothesis, this paper investigates the relation between risk-taking and stock price synchronicity from the perspective of information transparency. Several findings were extracted as follows: Firstly, because of the noise-trading, the high level of risk-taking reduces the stock price synchronicity in China which are supported by a series of robustness tests. Furthermore, opportunistic behaviors such as earnings management and bad news hiding is the possible mechanism of the relation between risk-taking and stock price synchronicity; managerial overconfidence aggregates such negative relationship. This study provides the theoretical explanation and empirical evidence for the relationship between risk taking and stock price synchronicity for the first time, the very important implication of this study is that although risk-taking would decrease stock price synchronicity, which is not the reflection of effective information disclosure or capital pricing. On the contrary, risk-taking decreases information transparency and induces more opportunistic behaviors.