Corporate Governance, Voluntary Disclosure, And Firm Information Environment

Abstract

This paper examines the relative performance of several corporate governance factors, specifically the characteristics of boards of directors, managerial ownership, and voluntary disclosure, in improving firm information environments. The paper uses a new empirical approach based on a B-convex method on a sample of 70 non-financial French listed firms belonging to the SBF120 index. Our findings show that 68.57% of our sample firms are located on the efficiency frontier. Corporate governance practices appear to serve as effective monitoring for the top executives of these firms, which reduces information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders, thereby improving the information environment. The empirical analysis also generates evidence that 31.42%of our sample firmslie outside the efficiency frontier. Corporate governance practices in many firms appear insufficient to improve firm information environments. These findings suggest the need for many SBF120 firms to improve their corporate governance practices.