How the media coverage affects the stock returns of listed real estate companies in China

We find that real estate companies are usually the focus of media, and the real estate industry is always hot for most inventors. The article discusses the relation between the media coverage and the stock returns of listed real estate companies in China in univariate and multivariate analysis. We find that stocks not covered by the media earn significant higher future returns than stocks that are heavily covered. We also compare the different effects of positive news and negative news, and the results support the result. Our findings suggest that the media can alleviate information frictions of inventors to affect stock returns by disseminating information broadly. However, the return premium has nothing to do with the content of the news, which shows that we should take account of the complexity of the media coverage to invest in real estate companies.