Using the sample of companies listed on Chinese GEM between 2009 and 2015, we examines the impact of government subsidy on companies’ future stock price crash risk and explores how the earning information opacity moderates the relation between government subsidy and crash risk. We find that: 1) the government subsidies for the listed companies increase their crash risk; 2) the firms with higher information opacity are exposed to higher stock price crash risk; 3) considering the cross effect of opacity and government subsidy, the positive correlation between government subsidy and crash risk is weakened under the high information opacity environment. With further analysis, we find that that government subsidy dominates the earning management level of Jones model while measuring firm’s information opacity. This paper not only enriches the study of external influencing factors of crash risk, but also broadens the study of government subsidy efficiency and provides a new decision basis for the investors to recognize the firms’ earning information quality.
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