金融科技如何重塑财务信息使用：来自盈余公告反应的证据（英）

1 How FinTech Reshapes Financial Information Use: Evidence from Reactions to Earnings Announcements This version: July 2025 Haoyu Gao School of Finance, Renmin University of China gaohaoyu@ruc.edu.cn Omrane Guedhami Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina omrane.guedhami@moore.sc.edu Xinming Li School of Finance, Nankai University xinming@nankai.edu.cn Huiyu Wen School of Management, Guangdong University of Technology wenhy@gdut.edu.cn Peixuan Zhao School of Finance, Renmin University of China zhaopeixuan@ruc.edu.cn 2 How FinTech Reshapes Financial Information Use: Evidence from Reactions to Earnings Announcements ABSTRACT Using novel manually collected financial technology (FinTech) patent application data, we document that FinTech development significantly reduces the information content of financial reporting, as evidenced by lower stock market reactions to corporate earnings announcements. Mechanism analysis indicates that the incremental and timely information generated by FinTech can effectively substitute for financial disclosures. This is especially pronounced in cases of limited corporate disclosures or high trading decision uncertainty. We exclude the alternative explanation that changes in corporate financial reporting quality drive these effects. Results suggest that FinTech improves financial information acquisition and processing and, in turn, the price informativeness in financial markets. JEL Classifications: G14; G20; O30 Keywords: FinTech; Corporate earnings announcements; Stock market reactions; Price informativeness; Information environment 3 1. Introduction Technological empowerment has become a significant driving force of financial development in recent years. Financial technology (FinTech) has increasingly improved dissemination, allowing more comprehensive information to be shared on a timely basis. This transformation has revolutionized financial markets’ ability to acquire and process information (Chen et al., 2019; Fuster et al., 2019; Boot et al., 2021). For instance, technological innovations such as algorithmic trading (Hendershott et al., 2011; Bhattacharya et al., 2020) and robo-journalism (Blankespoor et al., 2018) have been linked to greater capital market efficiency and lower information costs. Building on the informational role of FinTech, this paper seeks to explore whether it generate and incorporate newly generated, frequently updated information into stock prices. Specifically, we examine whether and how FinTech development, which enhances information acquisition and processing, affects the utilization and absorption of information conveyed from corporate financial reporting. Theoretical analyses offer two conflicting views on how innovations in these information sources impact stock market reactions to corporate earnings announcements. The “information substitution” hypothesis posits that the utility of financial reporting for investment decisions may diminish sig