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What Determines Corporate Transparency?

What Determines Corporate Transparency? ABSTRACT We investigate corporate transparency, defined as the availability of firm‐specific information to those outside publicly traded firms. We conceptualize corporate transparency within a country as output from a multifaceted system whose components collectively produce, gather, validate, and disseminate information. We factor analyze a range of measures capturing countries' firm‐specific information environments, isolating two distinct factors. The first factor, interpreted as financial transparency, captures the intensity and timeliness of financial disclosures, and their interpretation and dissemination by analysts and the media. The second factor, interpreted as governance transparency, captures the intensity of governance disclosures used by outside investors to hold officers and directors accountable. We investigate whether these factors vary with countries' legal/judicial regimes and political economies. Our main multivariate result is that the governance transparency factor is primarily related to a country's legal/judicial regime, whereas the financial transparency factor is primarily related to political economy. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Accounting Research Wiley

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References (42)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
0021-8456
eISSN
1475-679X
DOI
10.1111/j.1475-679X.2004.00136.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

ABSTRACT We investigate corporate transparency, defined as the availability of firm‐specific information to those outside publicly traded firms. We conceptualize corporate transparency within a country as output from a multifaceted system whose components collectively produce, gather, validate, and disseminate information. We factor analyze a range of measures capturing countries' firm‐specific information environments, isolating two distinct factors. The first factor, interpreted as financial transparency, captures the intensity and timeliness of financial disclosures, and their interpretation and dissemination by analysts and the media. The second factor, interpreted as governance transparency, captures the intensity of governance disclosures used by outside investors to hold officers and directors accountable. We investigate whether these factors vary with countries' legal/judicial regimes and political economies. Our main multivariate result is that the governance transparency factor is primarily related to a country's legal/judicial regime, whereas the financial transparency factor is primarily related to political economy.

Journal

Journal of Accounting ResearchWiley

Published: May 1, 2004

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