Abstract:
This thesis investigates how earnings quality relates to the share ownership of listed companies in China over the period from 2005 to 2009. Four indicators of earnings quality, which are earnings value relevance, timeliness, conservatism, and persistence, are analyzed in this thesis. Five categories of ownership are of interest here: state ownership, state-owned legal persons, non-state owned legal persons, B shares issued in domestic markets and foreign shares crosslisted in overseas markets. This thesis proposes that the shares held by state, state-owned legal persons and non-state owned legal persons are negatively related to earnings value relevance, timeliness, conservatism and persistence. In contrast, the issuance of B shares and the cross-listing status are expected to be positively related to these earnings properties. However, the empirical results from this study do not find consistent evidence supporting these hypotheses.