Does Corporate Governance Reform Necessarily Boost Firm Performance? Recent Evidence from Russia

This paper examines whether and how introducing corporate governance measures like transparency-and-disclosure (T&D) rules can boost firm performance. It is argued that the success of corporate governance reforms not only depends on resolving the conflict of interest between the controlling and the minority owner, but also on whether the reforms initiate a conflict of interest between the state and the controlling owner. Using unique data from Russia for 1995-2007, we find that the introduction of corporate governance codes in Russia has boosted firm performance of both energy and non-energy sector firms in our sample. However, the introduction of transparency and disclosure rules has been met with limited success in the country as it triggers the conflict of interest between the state and the controlling owner.