IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v47y2017icp219-235.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Independent director reputation incentives and stock price informativeness

Author

Listed:
  • Sila, Vathunyoo
  • Gonzalez, Angelica
  • Hagendorff, Jens

Abstract

We link the reputation incentives of independent directors to the informativeness of stock prices. We show that when more independent directors rank a directorship high, the firm-specific information content in a firm's stock price increases. Further, independent directors with high reputation incentives serve firms that voluntarily disclose more information and display lower crash risk. We find similar results when using plausibly exogenous shocks to the reputation incentives of independent directors. Our results therefore support a causal interpretation of the positive influence that independent directors with reputation incentives exert on corporate transparency.

Suggested Citation

  • Sila, Vathunyoo & Gonzalez, Angelica & Hagendorff, Jens, 2017. "Independent director reputation incentives and stock price informativeness," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 219-235.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:47:y:2017:i:c:p:219-235
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2017.09.018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929119917301852
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2017.09.018?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Easley & Soeren Hvidkjaer & Maureen O'Hara, 2002. "Is Information Risk a Determinant of Asset Returns?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 2185-2221, October.
    2. Fama, Eugene F & Jensen, Michael C, 1983. "Agency Problems and Residual Claims," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(2), pages 327-349, June.
    3. Michael C. Jensen, 2010. "The Modern Industrial Revolution, Exit, and the Failure of Internal Control Systems," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 22(1), pages 43-58, January.
    4. Jin, Li & Myers, Stewart C., 2006. "R2 around the world: New theory and new tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 257-292, February.
    5. Fahlenbrach, Rüdiger & Low, Angie & Stulz, René M., 2010. "Why do firms appoint CEOs as outside directors?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 12-32, July.
    6. Ryan, Harley Jr. & Wiggins, Roy III, 2004. "Who is in whose pocket? Director compensation, board independence, and barriers to effective monitoring," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 497-524, September.
    7. Ben-Nasr, Hamdi & Cosset, Jean-Claude, 2014. "State Ownership, Political Institutions, and Stock Price Informativeness: Evidence from Privatization," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 179-199.
    8. Anzhela Knyazeva & Diana Knyazeva & Ronald W. Masulis, 2013. "The Supply of Corporate Directors and Board Independence," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(6), pages 1561-1605.
    9. Miguel A. Ferreira & Paul A. Laux, 2007. "Corporate Governance, Idiosyncratic Risk, and Information Flow," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(2), pages 951-989, April.
    10. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2001. "Forecasting crashes: trading volume, past returns, and conditional skewness in stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 345-381, September.
    11. Jeffrey L. Coles & Naveen D. Daniel & Lalitha Naveen, 2014. "Co-opted Boards," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(6), pages 1751-1796.
    12. Ray Ball, 2009. "Market and Political/Regulatory Perspectives on the Recent Accounting Scandals," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 277-323, May.
    13. Qi Chen & Itay Goldstein & Wei Jiang, 2007. "Price Informativeness and Investment Sensitivity to Stock Price," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 619-650.
    14. Mark Lang & Karl V. Lins & Mark Maffett, 2012. "Transparency, Liquidity, and Valuation: International Evidence on When Transparency Matters Most," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3), pages 729-774, June.
    15. Jones, Jj, 1991. "Earnings Management During Import Relief Investigations," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 193-228.
    16. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Core, John E. & Guay, Wayne R., 2014. "Do independent directors cause improvements in firm transparency?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(3), pages 383-403.
    17. Mark L. Defond & Rebecca N. Hann & Xuesong Hu, 2005. "Does the Market Value Financial Expertise on Audit Committees of Boards of Directors?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 153-193, May.
    18. Gul, Ferdinand A. & Srinidhi, Bin & Ng, Anthony C., 2011. "Does board gender diversity improve the informativeness of stock prices?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 314-338, April.
    19. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Li, Yinghua & Zhang, Liandong, 2011. "Corporate tax avoidance and stock price crash risk: Firm-level analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 639-662, June.
    20. Dasgupta, Sudipto & Gan, Jie & Gao, Ning, 2010. "Transparency, Price Informativeness, and Stock Return Synchronicity: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(5), pages 1189-1220, October.
    21. Larcker, David F. & So, Eric C. & Wang, Charles C.Y., 2013. "Boardroom centrality and firm performance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 225-250.
    22. Gregory S. Miller, 2006. "The Press as a Watchdog for Accounting Fraud," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(5), pages 1001-1033, December.
    23. Rajgopal, Shiva & Venkatachalam, Mohan, 2011. "Financial reporting quality and idiosyncratic return volatility," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 1-20, February.
    24. Renneboog, Luc & Zhao, Yang, 2014. "Director networks and takeovers," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 218-234.
    25. Hutton, Amy P. & Marcus, Alan J. & Tehranian, Hassan, 2009. "Opaque financial reports, R2, and crash risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 67-86, October.
    26. Amihud, Yakov, 2002. "Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 31-56, January.
    27. Wendy Beekes & Peter Pope & Steven Young, 2004. "The Link Between Earnings Timeliness, Earnings Conservatism and Board Composition: evidence from the UK," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(1), pages 47-59, January.
    28. Rajgopal, Shiva & Venkatachalam, Mohan, 2011. "Financial reporting quality and idiosyncratic return volatility," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 1-20.
    29. Akbas, Ferhat & Meschke, Felix & Wintoki, M. Babajide, 2016. "Director networks and informed traders," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-23.
    30. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Balakrishnan, Karthik & Cohen, Daniel, 2012. "Corporate governance and the information environment: Evidence from state antitakeover laws," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 185-204.
    31. Carter, ME & Soo, BS, 1999. "The relevance of Form 8-K reports," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 119-132.
    32. S. P. Kothari & Susan Shu & Peter D. Wysocki, 2009. "Do Managers Withhold Bad News?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 241-276, March.
    33. Fama, Eugene F, 1980. "Agency Problems and the Theory of the Firm," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(2), pages 288-307, April.
    34. Christian Leuz & Peter D. Wysocki, 2016. "The Economics of Disclosure and Financial Reporting Regulation: Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 525-622, May.
    35. David Easley & Maureen O'hara, 2004. "Information and the Cost of Capital," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(4), pages 1553-1583, August.
    36. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Daniel, Naveen D. & Naveen, Lalitha, 2008. "Boards: Does one size fit all," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 329-356, February.
    37. Chan, Kalok & Hameed, Allaudeen, 2006. "Stock price synchronicity and analyst coverage in emerging markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 115-147, April.
    38. Robert M. Bushman & Joseph D. Piotroski & Abbie J. Smith, 2004. "What Determines Corporate Transparency?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 207-252, May.
    39. Masulis, Ronald W. & Wang, Cong & Xie, Fei, 2012. "Globalizing the boardroom—The effects of foreign directors on corporate governance and firm performance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 527-554.
    40. Hwang, Byoung-Hyoun & Kim, Seoyoung, 2009. "It pays to have friends," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 138-158, July.
    41. Shivdasani, Anil, 1993. "Board composition, ownership structure, and hostile takeovers," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1-3), pages 167-198, April.
    42. Rüdiger Fahlenbrach & Angie Low & René M. Stulz, 2017. "Do Independent Director Departures Predict Future Bad Events?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(7), pages 2313-2358.
    43. Alberto Abadie & David Drukker & Jane Leber Herr & Guido W. Imbens, 2004. "Implementing matching estimators for average treatment effects in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 4(3), pages 290-311, September.
    44. Renée B. Adams & Daniel Ferreira, 2007. "A Theory of Friendly Boards," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(1), pages 217-250, February.
    45. Masulis, Ronald W. & Mobbs, Shawn, 2014. "Independent director incentives: Where do talented directors spend their limited time and energy?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 406-429.
    46. Chordia, Tarun & Roll, Richard & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 2008. "Liquidity and market efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 249-268, February.
    47. Coles, Jeffrey L. & Lemmon, Michael L. & Felix Meschke, J., 2012. "Structural models and endogeneity in corporate finance: The link between managerial ownership and corporate performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 149-168.
    48. Ferreira, Daniel & Ferreira, Miguel A. & Raposo, Clara C., 2011. "Board structure and price informativeness," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 523-545, March.
    49. Lucian Bebchuk & Alma Cohen & Allen Ferrell, 2009. "What Matters in Corporate Governance?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(2), pages 783-827, February.
    50. Kaplan, Steven N. & Reishus, David, 1990. "Outside directorships and corporate performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 389-410, October.
    51. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Zhang, Hao & Li, Liuchuang & Tian, Gaoliang, 2014. "Press freedom, externally-generated transparency, and stock price informativeness: International evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 299-310.
    52. Adams, Renée B. & Ferreira, Daniel, 2008. "Do directors perform for pay?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 154-171, September.
    53. Fernandes, Nuno & Ferreira, Miguel A., 2008. "Does international cross-listing improve the information environment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 216-244, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Le, Nhan & Nguyen, Duc Duy & Sila, Vathunyoo, 2021. "Does shareholder litigation affect the corporate information environment?," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    2. Boubaker, Sabri & Mansali, Hatem & Rjiba, Hatem, 2014. "Large controlling shareholders and stock price synchronicity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 80-96.
    3. Chue, Timothy K. & Gul, Ferdinand A. & Mian, G. Mujtaba, 2019. "Aggregate investor sentiment and stock return synchronicity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    4. Renee B. Adams & Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 2010. "The Role of Boards of Directors in Corporate Governance: A Conceptual Framework and Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 58-107, March.
    5. Joachim Gassen & Hollis A. Skaife & David Veenman, 2020. "Illiquidity and the Measurement of Stock Price Synchronicity," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 419-456, March.
    6. Sun, Liang, 2021. "Does the location of directors' additional positions matter? A new dimension of board structure," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    7. Dang, Tung Lam & Dang, Man & Hoang, Luong & Nguyen, Lily & Phan, Hoang Long, 2020. "Media coverage and stock price synchronicity," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    8. James, Hui Liang & Ngo, Thanh & Wang, Hongxia, 2021. "Independent director tenure and corporate transparency," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    9. Xiang Zhang & Han Zhou, 2020. "Leverage structure and stock price synchronicity: Evidence from China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-15, July.
    10. Ferreira, Daniel & Ferreira, Miguel A. & Raposo, Clara C., 2011. "Board structure and price informativeness," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(3), pages 523-545, March.
    11. De Cesari, Amedeo & Huang-Meier, Winifred, 2015. "Dividend changes and stock price informativeness," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 1-17.
    12. Qi Wang & Maoxia Sun & Kongwen Wang, 2023. "Do Reputation Incentives Matter? Busy Directors and Corporate Social Responsibility in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-17, March.
    13. Etienne Redor, 2016. "Board attributes and shareholder wealth in mergers and acquisitions: a survey of the literature," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 20(4), pages 789-821, December.
    14. Jiang, Li & Kim, Jeong-Bon & Pang, Lei, 2013. "Insiders’ incentives for asymmetric disclosure and firm-specific information flows," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3562-3576.
    15. Armstrong, Christopher S. & Guay, Wayne R. & Weber, Joseph P., 2010. "The role of information and financial reporting in corporate governance and debt contracting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 179-234, December.
    16. Drobetz, Wolfgang & von Meyerinck, Felix & Oesch, David & Schmid, Markus, 2014. "Board Industry Experience, Firm Value, and Investment Behavior," Working Papers on Finance 1401, University of St. Gallen, School of Finance, revised Dec 2015.
    17. Ching-Hung Chang & Qingqing Wu, 2021. "Board Networks and Corporate Innovation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3618-3654, June.
    18. An, Suwei, 2023. "Essays on incentive contracts, M&As, and firm risk," Other publications TiSEM dd97d2f5-1c9d-47c5-ba62-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Guanmin Liao & Mark (Shuai) Ma & Xiaoyun Yu, 2022. "Transporting transparency: Director foreign experience and corporate information environment," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(7), pages 1343-1369, September.
    20. Wenjing Ouyang & Samuel H. Szewczyk, 2018. "Stock price informativeness on the sensitivity of strategic M&A investment to Q," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 745-774, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Director reputation; Financial reporting quality; Information asymmetry;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:47:y:2017:i:c:p:219-235. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcorpfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.