The Impact of Corporate Governance Mechanisms on the Earning Timeliness

Abstract

Objectives: Users of financial statements mainly apply announced earnings as the basis for making economic decisions. However, in order to being useful for making sound decisions, the announced earnings must have some features such as timeliness. On the other hand, corporate governance mechanisms can minimize the agency problems through transparent disclosure of financial information. The purpose of this research is analyzing the effect of corporate governance mechanisms on the timeliness of announced earnings for listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange. Method: In thin study, corporate ownership (concentrated ownership and state ownership) and independence of board of directors are considered as corporate governance mechanisms. We Used panel data of 76 listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange from 2006 to 2014. Results: The results show that concentrated ownership has positive and meaningful effect on timeliness of earnings. In the other word, the higher the concentrated ownership, the more timeliness of earnings. On the other hand, state ownership have negative and meaningful effect on timeliness of earning and independence of board of directors have no effect on this relationship.

Keywords

• earnings timeliness
• corporate governance
• concentrated ownership
• independence of board of directors
• state ownership