The determinants of web-based investor relations activities by companies operating in emerging economies : the case of Jordan

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Voluntary disclosures as a form of impression management to reduce evaluative uncertainty during M&A

This study develops and tests a set of hypotheses on how to manage investors’ evaluative uncertainty during M&A through a specific form of impression management, namely, interim news events. We suggest that voluntary disclosures are key in influencing investors’ reactions during M&A. Empirical support for our theoretical arguments is shown in a sample of 36,376 deals and 163,023 associated interim news events carried out by NYSE and NSDQ listed organizations over 10 years. Our research contributes to literature on voluntary disclosures, impression management, and managing M&A

The Ethical Dilemma of Information Asymmetry in Innovation: Reputation, Investors and Noise in the Innovation Channel.

A sufficient and steady stream of innovations is widely seen as a basis for healthy modern economies. Governments divert substantial resources from other purposes in society to increase innovation. Yet the failure rate among innovative SMEs is high, suggesting that resources are wasted. Avoiding such waste is a challenge for both governments and investors, but also raises a question for the innovative company, namely how to build and fund the\ud enterprise on an ethical basis. The dilemma of giving in to temptations to ‘cut corners’ clearly exists, for example to exploit the inevitable asymmetry of information arising in innovation and potentially deploy this in support of misleading claims about specific capabilities and/or the unjustified creation and exploitation of reputation. This is consistent with Olaf Fisscher’s finding that entrepreneurs starting new ventures tend to exhibit an inherent bias towards compromising their own values in order to succeed at any cost. When the innoSME’s aspirations are unrealistic or the proposed innovations are of marginal value, the ethical issues are broader and extend also to those who are potential financiers. Noting this as a gap in the ethics literature, we argue that the current situation fails to match economic and ethical ideals and that work is needed to develop tools which allow those who provide finance and support for innovation to target it more effectively at those who have a prospect of successfully launching genuine innovations and thus reduce the ‘noise’ in the innovation field

The Impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) on the Cost of Equity Capital of S&P Firms

This study examines the impact of SOX on the cost of equity capital for small and large S&P firms. The provisions of SOX aim to improve internal control systems and reduce information asymmetry by improving corporate governance systems and increasing transparency. Using a fixed-effects regression model, our findings suggest that the cost of equity capital has decreased post-SOX for the overall sample of firms, but more specifically for the small firms, which are usually associated with poor internal control systems and high information asymmetry. Collectively, our results provide evidence that SOX has had a positive impact on firms

Really “Lost in translation”? The economic consequences of issuing an annual report in English

In this paper, we investigate the economic consequences of using English as an external reporting language for firms from non- English speaking countries. We use a difference-indifferences technique to estimate the effect of language. We use a sample of 166 firms that start publishing an annual report in English in addition to an annual report in their local language. We benchmark these firms to a sample of control firms defined via a propensity score matching procedure to control for endogeneity in the choice of the reporting language. We show that information asymmetry (measured as the bid-ask spread) is reduced, analyst following is enlarged and a greater investor base (measured as a higher number of foreign investors) is attracted. Our findings suggest that language per se may contribute to an increase in market efficiency by providing information accessible to more market participants.rapport annuel, conséquences économiques, traduction, anglais, fourchette de prix, suivi des analystes, actionnariat étranger, différences dans les différences, score de propension.

The Endogeneity Bias in the Relation Between Cost-of-Debt Capital and Corporate Disclosure Policy

The purpose of this paper is twofold.First, we provide a discussion of the problems associated with endogeneity in empirical accounting research.We emphasize problems arising when endogeneity is caused by (1) unobservable firm specific factors and (2) omitted variables and discuss the merits and drawbacks of using panel data techniques to address these causes.Second, we investigate the magnitude of endogeneity bias in Ordinary Least Squares regressions of cost-of-debt capital on firm disclosure policy.We document how including a set of variables which theory suggests to be related with both cost-of-debt capital and disclosure and using fixed effects estimation in a panel dataset reduces the endogeneity bias and produces consistent results.This analysis reveals that the effect of disclosure policy on cost-of-debt capital is 200% higher than what is found in Ordinary Least Squares estimation.Finally, we provide direct evidence that disclosure is impacted by unobservable firm-specific factors that are also correlated with cost-of-capital.Disclosure policy;cost-of-debt capital;endogeneity

Disclosure and minority expropriation: A study of French listed firms

In this paper we examine the influence of minority expropriation on disclosure level in France where shareholders are poorly protected and the main agency problem is the one between controlling and minority shareholders (type II conflict) while prior studies have been undertaken in the United States, in a context of ownership dispersion and high investor protection where the main agency conflict opposes managers to shareholders (type I conflict). Using a sample of 81 French firms on the 2001-2004 period, we find a negative relation between disclosure level and both ownership and control concentration and double voting rights shares. These results confirm that type II conflict exacerbates the disclosure problem. Controlling shareholders benefit from superior information which helps them to profit from private benefits at the expense of minority shareholders particularly when they hold voting rights in excess of their cash flow rights; therefore they are likely to reduce disclosure. Our results show also a positive relation between disclosure level and family control which is similar to Ali, Chen et Radhakrishnan (2007) findings on American firms.corporate governance, minority expropriation, ownership structure

Corporate governance ratings as a means to reduce asymmetric information

Can corporate governance ratings reduce problems of asymmetric information between companies and investors? To answer this question, we set out to examine the information basis for providing such ratings by reviewing corporate governance attributes that are required or recommended in laws, accounting standards and codes, respectively. After that, we scrutinize and organize the publicly available information on the methodologies actually used by rating providers. However, important details of these methodologies are treated as confidential property, thus we approach the evaluation of corporate governance ratings as a means to reduce asymmetric information in a more general manner. We propose that the rating process may be seen as consisting of two general activities, namely a data reduction phase, and a data weighting, aggregation and classification phase. Findings based on a Danish data set suggest that rating providers by selecting relevant attributes in an intelligent way can improve the screening of companies according to governance quality. In contrast, it seems questionable that weighting, aggregation and classification of corporate governance attributes considerably improve discrimination according to governance qualityNo; keywords

Venture capital and risk in high-technology enterprises

We find UK investors and entrepreneurs are significantly concordant in rankings of investments and key factors for risk but significantly discordant on risk classes. Investors emphasise agency risk (e.g., motivation, empowerment, alignment), and entrepreneurs emphasise business risk (e.g., market opportunities)