IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pacfin/v93y2025ics0927538x2500201x.html

From accountability to transparency: The role of collective litigation in enhancing corporate information disclosure

Author

Listed:
  • Gao, Wangbo
  • Zhang, Zicheng
  • He, Pinglin
  • Wang, Xuewu

Abstract

Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design and a sample of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2017 to 2023, we examine whether the introduction of a collective litigation system improves corporate information disclosure. Exploiting the staggered implementation of the system and validating the parallel trends assumption, we find that collective litigation significantly enhances disclosure quality. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and placebo tests. Mechanism analyses suggest that the effect is achieved primarily through a deterrence channel and enhanced external governance. Importantly, the effectiveness of the litigation regime is amplified when supported by a strong legal environment and complementary regulatory guidance. However, risk-shifting behavior by firms weakens this effect. Improvements in disclosure quality are also associated with broader market outcomes, including changes in audit pricing, investor response, and perceived default risk. Collectively, our results highlight the role of legal enforcement in shaping disclosure practices in emerging markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Gao, Wangbo & Zhang, Zicheng & He, Pinglin & Wang, Xuewu, 2025. "From accountability to transparency: The role of collective litigation in enhancing corporate information disclosure," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:93:y:2025:i:c:s0927538x2500201x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2025.102864
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927538X2500201X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.pacfin.2025.102864?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexander Dyck & Natalya Volchkova & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "The Corporate Governance Role of the Media: Evidence from Russia," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(3), pages 1093-1135, June.
    2. Skinner, Dj, 1994. "Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Bad-News," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 38-60.
    3. Djankov, Simeon & McLiesh, Caralee & Shleifer, Andrei, 2007. "Private credit in 129 countries," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 299-329, May.
    4. Saumya Ranjan Dash & Mehul Raithatha, 2018. "Impact of disputed tax litigation risk on firm performance: evidence from India," Accounting Research Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 31(3), pages 458-478, September.
    5. Rafael La Porta & Florencio Lopez‐De‐Silanes & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2002. "Investor Protection and Corporate Valuation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(3), pages 1147-1170, June.
    6. Min, Byung S. & Smyth, Russell, 2014. "Corporate governance, globalization and firm productivity," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 372-385.
    7. Sarah C. Rice & David P. Weber, 2012. "How Effective Is Internal Control Reporting under SOX 404? Determinants of the (Non‐)Disclosure of Existing Material Weaknesses," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 50(3), pages 811-843, June.
    8. Zou, Hong & Wong, Sonia & Shum, Clement & Xiong, Jun & Yan, Jun, 2008. "Controlling-minority shareholder incentive conflicts and directors' and officers' liability insurance: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(12), pages 2636-2645, December.
    9. Joel Peress, 2014. "The Media and the Diffusion of Information in Financial Markets: Evidence from Newspaper Strikes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(5), pages 2007-2043, October.
    10. Dain C. Donelson & Christopher G. Yust, 2014. "Litigation Risk and Agency Costs: Evidence from Nevada Corporate Law," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(3), pages 747-780.
    11. Ying Huang & Ningzhong Li & Yong Yu & Xiaolu Zhou, 2020. "The Effect of Managerial Litigation Risk on Earnings Warnings: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 58(5), pages 1161-1202, December.
    12. Karpoff, Jonathan M. & Lee, D. Scott & Martin, Gerald S., 2008. "The Cost to Firms of Cooking the Books," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(3), pages 581-611, September.
    13. Yongjian Huang & Yiqing Zhou & Luyao Mou & Haolin Li & Yining Zhang, 2024. "Self‐media information disclosure and firm productivity," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(6), pages 3959-3971, September.
    14. Karthik Balakrishnan & Mary Brooke Billings & Bryan Kelly & Alexander Ljungqvist, 2014. "Shaping Liquidity: On the Causal Effects of Voluntary Disclosure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(5), pages 2237-2278, October.
    15. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "Financial Ratios, Discriminant Analysis And The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(4), pages 589-609, September.
    16. Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 2012. "Information Disclosure and Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 195-234, February.
    17. Zhang, Jing & Zhang, Lu & Zhang, Mancen, 2024. "Media pressure, internal control, and corporate environmental information disclosure," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    18. Vikramaditya Khanna & E. Han Kim & Yao Lu, 2015. "CEO Connectedness and Corporate Fraud," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(3), pages 1203-1252, June.
    19. Ahsan Habib & Mostafa Monzur Hasan, 2020. "Business strategies and annual report readability," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(3), pages 2513-2547, September.
    20. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy: A Discriminant Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 193-194, March.
    21. Marilyn F. Johnson & Ron Kasznik & Karen K. Nelson, 2000. "Shareholder Wealth Effects of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 217-233, September.
    22. Deborah R. Hensler, 2009. "The Globalization of Class Actions: An Overview," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 622(1), pages 7-29, March.
    23. Chen, Jierong & Gou, Zhoumin & Zhao, Kunyu, 2024. "Can legal construction in the securities market strengthen corporate audit quality: Evidence from the implementation of new securities act," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 96(PA).
    24. Tian, Gloria Y. & Twite, Garry, 2011. "Corporate governance, external market discipline and firm productivity," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 403-417, June.
    25. Healy, Paul M. & Palepu, Krishna G., 2001. "Information asymmetry, corporate disclosure, and the capital markets: A review of the empirical disclosure literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 405-440, September.
    26. Xiaoyu Cui & Jianlei Han & Jeong Bon Kim & Baolei Qi, 2024. "Federal judge ideology, securities class action litigation, and stock price crash risk," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(4), pages 4131-4155, December.
    27. Boone, Audra & Fich, Eliezer & Griffin, Thomas, 2023. "Shareholder litigation risk and the information environment: Revisiting evidence from two natural experiments," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    28. Paul C. Tetlock, 2010. "Does Public Financial News Resolve Asymmetric Information?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(9), pages 3520-3557.
    29. Kim, Irene & Skinner, Douglas J., 2012. "Measuring securities litigation risk," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 290-310.
    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. Allaya, Manel & Derouiche, Imen & Muessig, Anke, 2022. "Voluntary disclosure, ownership structure, and corporate debt maturity: A study of French listed firms," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    2. Chen, Zhihong & Li, Oliver Zhen & Zou, Hong, 2016. "Directors׳ and officers׳ liability insurance and the cost of equity," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 100-120.
    3. Benito Arruñada, 2011. "Mandatory accounting disclosure by small private companies," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 377-413, December.
    4. Saif-Alyousfi, Abdulazeez Y.H., 2025. "Artificial intelligence, information environment, and capital market efficiency," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    5. Hurwitz, Helen, 2017. "The understatement of large negative earnings news in managers’ annual guidance," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 119-133.
    6. Gao, Xin & Xu, Weidong & Li, Donghui, 2025. "Media coverage and managerial investment learning from stock markets: International evidence," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    7. Byzalov, Dmitri & Basu, Sudipta, 2024. "The misuse of regression-based x-Scores as dependent variables," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2).
    8. Jing Chen & Elaine Henry & Xi Jiang, 2023. "Is Cybersecurity Risk Factor Disclosure Informative? Evidence from Disclosures Following a Data Breach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 199-224, September.
    9. D. G. DeBoskey & Yan Luo & Linying Zhou, 2019. "CEO power, board oversight, and earnings announcement tone," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 657-680, February.
    10. Li, Yuanpeng & Shi, Haina & Zhou, Yi, 2021. "The influence of the media on government decisions: Evidence from IPOs in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    11. Tanzina Haque, 2023. "“Impact of Bankruptcy Risk on Reporting Aelay: An Empirical Evidence from Engineering Industry in Bangladesh.â€," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 7(8), pages 1538-1552, August.
    12. Fargher, Neil & Wee, Marvin, 2019. "The impact of Ball and Brown (1968) on generations of research," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 55-72.
    13. Yongjian Huang & Yiqing Zhou & Luyao Mou & Haolin Li & Yining Zhang, 2024. "Self‐media information disclosure and firm productivity," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 45(6), pages 3959-3971, September.
    14. Stefan F. Schantl & Alfred Wagenhofer, 2024. "Economic effects of litigation risk on corporate disclosure and innovation," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 3328-3368, December.
    15. Ting Zhang & So Yean Kwack & Yi Si & Gaoliang Tian, 2023. "Non‐GAAP earnings reporting following going‐concern opinions," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(3), pages 3217-3252, September.
    16. Julia D’Souza & K. Ramesh & Min Shen, 2010. "Disclosure of GAAP line items in earnings announcements," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 179-219, March.
    17. Lars Helge Hass & Monika Tarsalewska & Feng Zhan, 2016. "Equity Incentives and Corporate Fraud in China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 138(4), pages 723-742, November.
    18. Mariem Khalifa & Ali Sheikhbahaei & Mohammed Aminu Sualihu, 2024. "The power of the business media: Evidence from firm‐level productivity," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1-2), pages 5-44, January.
    19. Oliver Lukason & María-del-Mar Camacho-Miñano, 2019. "Bankruptcy Risk, Its Financial Determinants and Reporting Delays: Do Managers Have Anything to Hide?," Risks, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-15, July.
    20. Myojung Cho & Gopal V. Krishnan, 2023. "Principles-based accounting standards and audit outcomes: empirical evidence," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 164-200, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    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:pacfin:v:93:y:2025:i:c:s0927538x2500201x. 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/pacfin .

    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.