Corporate Governance and Information Transparency: A Simultaneous Equations Approach

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and information transparency. In this paper, we aim to answer the important questions of whether corporate governance affects financial information transparency, if so, whether transparency reporting can affects corporate governance mechanisms and the interaction of internal and external governance mechanisms. This study uses a sample of 28 non-financial listed Tunisian companies and covers an eight-year period from 2006 to 2013. To test the hypotheses of this research, a simultaneous equation system model was applied. The results obtained shows that, for the Tunisians companies, financial transparency have a significant effect on board size and on audit quality. The current study also provides evidence that corporate governance mechanisms are interdependent. The findings may be of interest to those academic researchers, practitioners and regulators who are interested in discovering corporate governance practices in Tunisian context. This paper extends the existing literature, in the Tunisian context in particular, by examining the causal relationship between corporate governance and information transparency.