Board monitoring and corporate disclosure: the role of the institutional environment and firm-level governance

Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies. 2025. Vol. 15. No. 1. P. 138–175.

Муравьев А. А.

This paper uses a unique panel dataset of publicly traded firms in an emerging economy to study whether and how corporate disclosure is related to board monitoring and whether and how this link is affected by the institutional environment and firm-level governance. Using conventional techniques of panel data analysis, we find a positive relationship between the amount of disclosure and a number of proxies for board monitoring, suggesting complimentary between the two. We also find greater disclosure by firms that have better internal governance (proxied by a dummy for single class stock) and face better institutional environment (proxied by a dummy for ADRs/GDRs). Moreover, these two factors seem to reinforce each other with respect to disclosure. The key result is that the complementarity between disclosure and board monitoring is strongest among well-governed firms operating in a weak institutional environment. There is little evidence of such a complementarity under strong institutions. The findings lend support to comprehensive policies aimed at simultaneous improvements in both board governance and corporate disclosure in weak institutional settings.

Ключевые слова: Russia, institutional environment, corporate disclosure, Internal governance, board monitoring