Corporate governance and forward-looking disclosure: Evidence from China

Abstract

This paper investigates the association between a range of corporate governance mechanisms and forward-looking disclosure (FLD) in a low information environment: the Chinese stock markets. It finds that the implementation of certain monitoring and control mechanisms, such as financial expertise on audit committees and independent directors on the board of directors, can improve the extent of FLD. However, the size of the supervisory board and separating the roles of the CEO and the chairman of the board of directors is of little help in explaining any improvement in FLD. In contrast, ownership structure appears to play an essential role in determining FLD policies. Indeed, listed firms with high levels of foreign ownership and fewer pyramidal layers in their ownership structure tend to disclose more forward-looking information. Of particular interest, the association between state ownership and FLD is likely to be non-linear (an inverted U-shape), and the inflection point at which the association becomes negative occurs at a state ownership over 33 percent. In summary, this study provides new evidence on the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on FLD in China's unique institutional environment.