INTERACTIONS BETWEEN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, EARNINGS QUALITY ATTRIBUTES AND VALUE OF FIRM: EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS FROM NON-FINANCIAL SECTOR OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

The existing literature concerning governance-value relationship is inconclusive as it assumes that the association is direct. A theoretical argument suggests that the effective corporate governance reduces the information asymmetry through better financial reporting quality. This serves as a tool to reduce this information risk. Following the argument, this study is an attempt to investigate the mediating role of earnings quality, a measure of financial reporting quality, in governance-value association. For estimation, panel data of 214 non-financial listed firms in Pakistan for the period 2003-2014 is considered and one-way random effect estimator for the SUR system is employed, as suggested by Biørn (2004). This study uses principal component analysis to measure the overall corporate governance; and to measure the financial reporting quality, five dimensions are considered to capture the reliability and relevancy characteristics of financial reporting. Value of firm is measured through return on assets and Tobin’s-Q. The findings of the study show that the corporate governance effectively improves the earnings quality and value of the firm, which approves the monitoring role of corporate governance mechanism. Moreover, earnings quality contributes positively in maximizing the value of the firm and the results demonstrate that better earnings quality partially mediates the governance-value association. It is concluded that corporate governance not only improves the value of the firm directly, but also indirectly through the channel of earnings quality. The findings may be of interest to the academic researchers, practitioners and regulators who are interested in discovering the quality of corporate governance practices in Pakistani context. The findings also provide the Pakistani business community insights concerning the quality of corporate governance and corporate reporting. Also, this research helps to inform regulators about the benefits of disclosure of more transparent information to stakeholders and to the firm. Keywords: Earnings quality, channel effect, overall corporate governance, SUR, channel effect, value of firm.