Covid-19 disclosure: do internal corporate governance and audit quality matter?

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impact of internal corporate governance and audit quality on the level of COVID-19 disclosure in Egypt. Design/methodology/approachThe authors use manual content analysis to measure levels of COVID-19 disclosure in the narrative sections of annual reports. The authors analyze all companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange over 2020-2021. The authors use different regression models to test the research hypotheses. FindingsThe analysis adds to the literature in two crucial respects. First, it provides a measure for COVID-19 disclosure in Egypt. Second, it provides evidence that governance mechanisms (board diversity, audit committee [AC] independence), auditor type and audit opinion affect the level of COVID-19 disclosure. The higher level of COVID-19 disclosure is associated with firms with more female directors on the board, being audited by one of the big four audit firms and receiving standard clean audit opinion. While the inexistence of an AC and more executives on the AC negatively affect COVID-19 disclosure levels. Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, it is the only paper that examines COVID-19 disclosure in the Egyptian context. It is also the first paper that provides evidence on the impact of internal governance and audit quality on COVID-19 disclosure.

An investigation into factors affecting corporate risk management in ASEAN-4 Countries

This study investigated the effect of corporate governance on corporate risk management. By using the regression analysis method, different results on the effects of the variables independent commissioners, female commissioners, meeting frequency, and audit committee members' expertise background on corporate risk management were obtained. In addition, companies in Singapore that had high levels of risk management activities were found to experience faster recovery after the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic compared to other countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines). Overall, this study concludes that corporate governance has an important role in improving the risk management activities of a firm. This study may serve as a consideration for corporate governance implementation to improve corporate risk management.

COVID-19 exposure: a risk-averse firms’ response

Purpose: Without a doubt, COVID-19 is a disruptive event that one may not consider before it becomes a global pandemic. This study aims to examine the firm’s risk preference, represented as board characteristics towards COVID-19 exposure in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses the boardroom’s average value of board age and female proportion to represent board characteristics. Fixed-effect regression based on industry (Industry FE) and year (Year FE) analyses 861 firm-year observations of all firms listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange in 2019–2020. Findings: The result shows a positive relationship between the female board and COVID-19 exposure disclosure. Meanwhile, the age proportion does not offer a significant result. The additional analysis document that the directors mainly drove the result and were only relevant during 2020. These results are robust due to coarsened exact matching tests and Heckman’s two-stage regression. This study enriches COVID-19 literature, especially from a quantitative perspective. Originality/value: The rise of global crises makes the outputs of this study important for non-financial listed firms in Indonesia. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Voluntary disclosure of pandemic exposure and stock price crash risk.

We examine whether a firm's voluntary disclosure of pandemic exposure increases stock price crash risk in a turbulent stock market caused by the spread of COVID-19 and other epidemic diseases. Pandemic risk is an unprecedented type of economic shock that alters the firm's stock price. Using an innovative firm-level pandemic exposure dataset based on the textual analysis of earnings conference calls, we show that there is a strong positive correlation between firm-level disclosure of pandemic exposure and one-quarter-ahead stock price crash risk.

Firm partisan positioning, polarization, and risk communication: Examining voluntary disclosures on COVID-19.

Research Summary: The COVID-19 pandemic will rank among the greatest challenges many executives will have faced and not only due to the operational challenges it posed. Upon entering the U.S. context, the disease was immediately politically polarized, with clear partisan splits forming in risk perceptions of the disease unrelated to science. We exploit this context to examine whether firms' partisan positioning affects whether and how they communicate risk to their investors on a polarized public policy issue. To do so, we examine the covariation between firms' disclosure of COVID-19 risks and the partisanship of their political giving. Our analysis of earnings call and campaign contribution data for the S&P 500 reveals a positive association between a firm's contributions to Democrats and its disclosure of COVID-19 risks. Managerial Summary: From its onset in the United States, attitudes toward and discourse around the COVID-19 pandemic was heavily politicized and perceptions of the disease's risks were seen as more serious by Democratic-identifying individuals than Republican identifiers. In this study, we examine whether this pattern also holds for U.S. publicly traded firms, who can also stake out a political position through their corporate political action committee campaign contributions. In analyses of earnings call transcripts from the first quarter of 2020, we show that the more Republican-leaning (Democrat-leaning) a firm's campaign contributions are, the less (more) likely it was to voluntarily disclose risks related to COVID-19. We argue that these findings hold implications for parties interested in interpreting firm's risk disclosures on politically polarized issues.