Information Disclosure and Corporate Governance

Public policy discussions typically favor greater corporate disclosure as a way to reduce firms' agency problems. This argument is incomplete because it overlooks that better disclosure regimes can also aggravate agency problems and related costs, including executive compensation. Consequently, a point can exist beyond which additional disclosure decreases firm value. Holding all else equal, we further show that larger firms will adopt stricter disclosure rules than smaller firms and firms with better disclosure will employ more able management. We show that mandated increases in disclosure could, in part, explain recent increases in both CEO compensation and CEO turnover rates.     

环境信息披露制度、公司治理和环境信息披露

企业环境信息披露体现了上市公司对环境信息披露制度的遵守和执行,同时增加了公众对上市公司行为的了解;反过来,这将促使上市公司改变他们的一些行为。本文在给出企业环境信息披露制度定义的基础上,采用我国重污染行业上市公司2006—2010年年报和独立报告中披露的环境信息进行实证研究,研究证明制度对企业环境信息披露有显著的正向关系,即环境信息披露法律法规的颁布及实施提高了企业环境信息披露水平;同时研究验证了公司治理具有增强制度对企业环境信息披露的促进作用。研究结果为《上市公司环境信息披露指南》的出台提供了证据支持、为完善企业环境信息披露制度的设计提供了经验证据。     

上市公司会计信息披露与公司治理结构的互动:一种框架分析

本文分析了上市公司会计信息披露与公司治理结构的内在关系 ,认为在公司治理结构的形成与运行过程中 ,会计信息披露发挥着重大的作用。与此同时 ,有效的公司治理结构也有助于上市公司会计信息披露行为的改进。从而为优化上市公司治理结构和会计信息披露实践提供了新的思路。     

Culture, Corporate Governance and Disclosure in Malaysian Corporations

Evidence from research conducted on corporate accounting indicates that the interaction of environmental factors in fluences disclosure practices. The purpose of this study is to examine the importance of various corporate governance and cultural (race and education) characteristics, in addition to firm–specific factors, as possible determinants of voluntary (non–mandatory accounting and non–accounting information) disclosures in the annual reports of Malaysian listed corporations. The results of the regression analysis indicate significant associations (at the 5 per cent level) between two corporate governance variables ( viz . chair who is a non–executive director and domination of family members on boards) and the extent of voluntary disclosure. This finding has implications for corporate governance policy formulation by the Malaysian Institute of Corporate Governance (MISG). One cultural factor (proportion of Malay directors on the board) is significantly associated (at the 5 per cent level) with the extent of voluntary disclosure suggesting that governmental focus on culture may solicit a response to secrecy from those who feel threatened.     

公司治理与会计信息质量

公司治理包括内部公司治理和外部公司治理。完善的公司治理对于防范会计信息失真，保证会计信息质量有着重大意义。我国会计信息失真严重，很大程度上不是由于会计本身的原因，而更主要是与我国企业治理不完善，缺乏对管理当局有效的监督和制约、造成严重的内部人控制现象严重有关。要从根本上治理会计信息失真，除了完善有关会计准则、提高会计人员素质等外，应当建立有效的公司治理，减少管理当局对会计信息的操纵。     

衍生工具、公司治理和盈余质量

衍生工具在国内外日益受到实务界和学术界的关注。本文以我国2007年至2013年间具有潜在风险敞口的A股非金融类上市公司为样本,研究企业应用衍生工具对盈余质量的影响及公司治理在两者关系中的作用。研究结果表明,应用衍生工具企业的操纵性应计利润显著增加,并且市场做出负向反应,盈余反应系数显著下降,可能的原因包括管理层的投机行为及套期保值会计制度的影响;进一步检验公司治理的作用,发现衍生工具对盈余质量的负面作用主要表现在公司治理水平较低的企业。这一结果说明公司治理差的企业应用衍生工具更倾向于投机,或者在套保认定为无效的情况下操纵盈余,对盈余质量产生负面影响。     

货币政策、信息披露质量与公司债务融资

信息透明度是影响企业债务融资成本的重要因素。本文以2002-2010年深圳A股公司为样本,研究发现:信息披露质量较好的公司在货币政策趋紧时获得了更多的银行借款,且随着融资需求的增大,获得的银行借款更多,银行借款的利率也更低。结果表明,较高的信息披露质量有助于降低银企间的信息不对称程度,增强企业获得银行贷款的资信度,降低企业的债务融资成本,从而减轻货币政策变动对企业债务融资带来的不利影响。     

产品市场竞争、董事会治理与上市公司信息披露质量

以我国627家上市公司为样本,通过实证研究发现董事会规模、内部董事比例、两职分离状况的系数有利于提高企业的信息披露质量;独立董事比例以及董事会会议召开次数对信息披露质量的提高没有影响。在高竞争度的样本内,企业的内部董事比例、董事会会议召开次数与信息披露质量存在一定的显著性,董事会规模、独立董事比例、两职分离状况的系数与信息披露质量均表现出关系不显著的特征,这说明产品市场竞争与董事会治理机制之间为替代关系;而在低产品市场竞争度样本回归中,董事会治理五个特征变量与市场披露的相关系数与全样本基本一致。     

公司特征差异、内部治理与盈余质量

本文在考虑代理冲突程度、业绩表现与公司内部治理的内生关系基础上,分析并检验了代理冲突程度和业绩表现两个表征治理效率的公司特征因素对公司内部治理与盈余质量关系的影响。研究发现在公司代理冲突程度较高和业绩表现较差时,公司内部治理水平的提升显著改善了盈余质量;相对于代理冲突程度的影响而言,业绩水平在影响公司内部治理与盈余质量相关关系中起主导作用。本文的研究为公司内部治理与盈余质量的相关关系提供了新的解释视角。     

Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance

A combined treatment of corporate finance and corporate governance is herein proposed. Debt and equity are treated not mainly as alternative financial instruments, but rather as alternative governance structures. Debt governance works mainly out of rules, while equity governance allows much greater discretion. A project-financing approach is adopted. I argue that whether a project should be financed by debt or by equity depends principally on the characteristics of the assets. Transaction-cost reasoning supports the use of debt (rules) to finance redeployable assets, while non-redeployable assets are financed by equity (discretion). Experiences with leasing and leveraged buyouts are used to illustrate the argument. The article also compares and contrasts the transaction-cost approach with the agency approach to the study of economic organization.     

Corporate Governance: Factors Influencing Voluntary Disclosure by Publicly Traded Canadian Firms*

We report on the comprehensiveness of voluntary corporate governance disclosures in the annual reports and management information circulars of Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) firms. We focus on disclosure of the corporate governance practices implemented by our sample of TSE 300 firms vis‐à‐vis the 14 guidelines set out in the TSE's report on corporate governance Where Were the Directors? Our analysis indicates that only a very few firms disclose that they have fully implemented the TSE guidelines, and that the extent of disclosure of corporate governance practices implemented varies widely among the firms. We then test factors associated with the comprehensiveness of such disclosures and the choice of disclosure medium using simultaneous equations multivariate analysis. We also assess the influence of publicized corporate governance failures on disclosure. Overall, our results suggest that the choices of disclosure medium and the extent of disclosure are made concurrently, and are influenced by the strategic considerations of management.     

Disclosure Regulation and Corporate Acquisitions

This paper examines the effect of disclosure regulation on the takeover market. We study the implementation of a recent European regulation that imposes tighter disclosure requirements regarding the financial and ownership information on public firms. We find a substantial drop in the number of control acquisitions after the implementation of the regulation, a decrease that is concentrated in countries with more dynamic takeover markets. Consistent with the idea that the disclosure requirements increased acquisition costs, we also observe that, under the new disclosure regime, target (acquirer) stock returns around the acquisition announcement are higher (lower), and toeholds are substantially smaller. Overall, our evidence suggests that tighter disclosure requirements can impose significant acquisition costs on bidders and thus slow down takeover activity.     

它山之石:QFII与上市公司信息披露

合格境外机构投资者(QFII)为上市公司提供了一个来自境外的特殊且专业的监督力量。本文利用2006-2015年中国A股上市公司数据,并采用Kim and Verrecchia(2001)的方法测度信息披露质量,发现QFII持股与公司信息披露质量显著正相关。在使用PSM-DID、安慰剂检验、工具变量法和反向因果识别来缓解内生性后,本文证明了QFII持股与公司信息披露之间存在因果关系,说明QFII已经成为一种重要的外部治理力量。分样本研究发现,QFII持股对信息披露质量的改善作用对内部治理较好和被“四大”审计的公司更加明显。最后,机制检验发现QFII可以通过增加持股公司的分析师跟踪人数和高管薪酬业绩敏感性来改善信息披露质量。因此,增加QFII的数量和逐渐放松资本项目管制有助于改善信息环境和保护中小股东权益,进而促进我国资本市场的健康发展。     

Corporate Innovation and Disclosure Strategy

This study investigates the impact of firm innovation on MD&A disclosure. Firms need to reduce information asymmetry to assist investors on the one hand and to prevent rivals from benefitting from disclosures on the other. Innovative firms can use an optimistic tone to convey good news but increase content similarity to reduce proprietary costs. Management chooses a certain content similarity and tone strategy for an innovation and as the number of innovations increases, the ratio of similar innovation disclosure and positive tone increases in the overall MD&A, resulting in greater content similarity and more news conveyed with a positive tone. We find that the firm's level of innovation is positively related to content similarity and tone optimism. We also find that this positive relation is more pronounced when product market competition is stronger and when regional intellectual property rights protection is weaker. Our further analyses on market responses provide evidence suggesting that management's disclosure strategy functions as intended.     

Investor Sentiment and Corporate Disclosure

This paper investigates how firms react strategically to investor sentiment via their disclosure policies in an attempt to influence the sentiment‐induced biases in expectations. Proxying for sentiment using the Michigan Consumer Confidence Index, we show that during low‐sentiment periods, managers increase forecasts to “walk up” current estimates of future earnings over long horizons. In contrast, during periods of high sentiment, managers reduce their long‐horizon forecasting activity. Further, while there is an association between sentiment and the biases in analysts' estimates of future earnings, management disclosures vary with sentiment even after controlling for analyst pessimism, indicating that managers attempt to communicate with investors at large, and not just analysts. Our study provides evidence that firms' long‐horizon disclosure choices reflect managers' desire to maintain optimistic earnings valuations.     

Multidimensional Competition and Corporate Disclosure

In this paper, we argue that the influence product market competition exerts on disclosure is defined by the combined effect of the incentives and disincentives to disclose raised by the multiple competition dimensions. We distinguish between firm‐ and industry‐level competition measures, and we hypothesize that the former raises agency and proprietary costs, whereas the latter creates incentives to disclose either to fulfil the owners’ need for information to monitor managers or to deter the entrance of new competitors in the industry. Our research design allows for non‐monotonic relationships between competition and disclosure as well as for interactions between competition dimensions. Using a sample of US manufacturing companies, we gather evidence that is consistent with our hypotheses. First, we find an inverted U‐shape relationship between corporate disclosure and a firm's abnormal profitability, which is suggestive of firms being reluctant to disclose when they are underperforming (outperforming) their rivals because of the fear of unveiling agency conflicts (raising proprietary costs). Second, we observe a U‐shape relationship between corporate disclosure and industry profitability, although this U design evolves to approximate a rising function as the protection provided by entry barriers increases.     

Dividend Payouts and Corporate Governance Quality: An Empirical Investigation

Motivated by agency theory, we investigate how a firm's overall quality of corporate governance affects its dividend policy. Using a large sample of firms with governance data from The Institutional Shareholder Services, we find that firms with stronger governance exhibit a higher propensity to pay dividends, and, similarly, dividend payers tend to pay larger dividends. The results are consistent with the notion that shareholders of firms with better governance quality are able to force managers to disgorge more cash through dividends, thereby reducing what is left for expropriation by opportunistic managers. We employ the two‐stage least squares approach to cope with possible endogeneity and still obtain consistent results. Our results are important as they show that corporate governance quality does have a palpable impact on critical corporate decisions such as dividend policy.     

所有权、公司治理结构与会计信息质量——基于契约理论的现实思考

公司治理结构本质上是一个关于企业所有权安排的契约。剩余索取权与控制权的对称性分配是企业治理的效率所在。高质量的会计信息在利益相关者关于企业治理结构的产权博弈中发挥着重要作用 ,而会计信息质量本身又受到了这种产权博弈结果的影响。本文以契约理论为基础 ,对公司治理结构与会计信息质量的相互作用机理进行探讨 ,并结合我国转轨经济的特点进行分析 ,以期为治理结构优化与会计信息质量的提高提供帮助。