Causalité Entre Performance Et Divulgations D'informations Via Les Sites Web (document en anglais)

specific areas. For example, Diamond and Verrecchia (1991) and Kim and Verrecchia (1994) claim that

voluntary disclosure can reduce information asymmetry between informed and uninformed investors. Moreover,

empirical studies carried out by Barry and Brown (1986), Botosan (1997) and Piotroski (1999) demonstrate,

among other things, that voluntary disclosure helps to reduce the cost of equity.

However, more recent studies have indicated that the abovementioned benefits may not hold for all stock

markets. Using a dataset comprising 110 public companies with both A- and B-share listings in China, Wang

et al. (2008) investigate the effects of voluntary disclosure and find no evidence that these companies benefited

from that disclosure in the form of a lower cost of debt capital. Their analysis suggests that voluntary disclosure

in the Chinese stock market exhibits determinants and characteristics that may be very different from

those found in the stock markets of developed countries.

We intend to carry this line of thought further by investigating more closely the determinants and consequences

of voluntary disclosure in the Chinese stock market using a much larger dataset – 1066 Chinese public

companies – than that used in Wang et al. (2008). This extensive dataset represents about 80% of public

companies listed on the Chinese stock exchanges that have a relatively complete historical record of annual

reports.

Our investigation is motivated by two considerations. First, since their establishment in 1990 and 1991,

respectively, the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges have become major global stock exchanges in

terms of total capitalization, trading volume and the rapid pace of growth in the number and size of public

companies. Also, a large individual investor population trades shares on both exchanges and China boasts

an ever-increasing number of institutional investors. Further, foreign investors with Qualified Foreign

Institutional Investor (QFII) status have also begun to invest directly in the Chinese stock market. Previous

studies have found that both individual and institutional investors in China are less experienced and more

restricted than their counterparts in developed countries such as the United States (Chen et al., 2004; Bailey

et al., 2009; Deng and Xu, 2011), which may influence their understanding of financial reports and, in turn,

affect the disclosure motivation of listed firms. The growing complexity of China’s stock market calls for a

better understanding of the key aspects

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