Voluntary Disclosure Of Listed Corporations And Its Regulation

The general idea of this paper is to research these questions analytically and empirically. On base of the efficiency market theory and inefficiency market theory (agent cost theory, signal theory ,private principal-contract theory), combining the research method and conclusion of former literature and the special research background in China, this paper develops our hypotheses and researches the determinants of voluntary information disclosure from five factors that are company size, operating performance, financial leverage, the proportion of independent directors to total number of directors on the board, concentration of ownership . And multivariate regression is employed to empirically research a sample of 109 publicly held companies in A share of Shanghai stock market. The results are summarized below: in regression analysis about whole sample group, only operating performance is significantly and positively related to the extent of voluntary disclosure, but not to company size, financial leverage, the proportion of independent directors to total number of directors on the board and concentration of ownership. The regression consequences of voluntary disclosures of three types of information(strategic, non-financial, financial) demonstrate that only voluntary disclosure of non-financial information has positive effect, which the result indicates that operating performance and the proportion of independent directors to total number of directors on the board are significantly related to the extent of voluntary disclosure of non-financial information, but not to company size, financial leverage and concentration of ownership. Finally based on the front studies, this paper puts forward some advice that for emerging Chinese capital market, regulatory bodies, such as CSRC, should pay more attention to voluntary information disclosure of listed companies and take effective measures to improve disclosure level .