Impact of Corporate Governance Attributes on Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Iran

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on the extent of voluntary disclosure in annual reports of 213 companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) for the period 1388 to 1389. In this study, to measure the level of voluntary disclosure in annual reports, an un-weighted disclosure index of 50 voluntary items has been used. We also used the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model to test the research hypotheses. The empirical results indicate that there is positive and statistically significant relationship between institutional ownership and voluntary disclosure. We did not find statistically significant relationships between the extent of voluntary disclosure and any of board characteristics, directors’ ownership, and block holders’ ownership. In fact institutional ownership is represented as the factor that causes firms to disclose information voluntarily. This study provides empirical evidence assisting regulators to enforce new policies to improve the quality of financial reporting.

Keywords

• corporate governance
• board characteristics
• ownership structure
• voluntary disclosure
• un-weighted index