The economic consequences of increasing the international visibility of financial reports

Hervé Stolowy (), Thomas Jeanjean and Michael Erkens

No 957, HEC Research Papers Series from HEC Paris

Abstract: Author's abstract. We investigate the economic consequences of increasing financial report visibility, measured by the use of english as a reporting language for firms from non-English-speaking countries. We sample 113 firms that started publishing their annual report in English (in addition to their local language) during 2004-2007 while not cross listing, not joining a major stock index or a stock index that requires external reporting in English and not engaging in major M&A activity. Taking into account the endogeneity of the reporting language, with a difference-in-differences setting and propensity score matching, and controlling for confounding factors, we find that adoption of English in the annual report is associated with lower information asymmetry, greater analyst following and more foreign investors.

This suggests that language per se is an attribute of the firm’s visibility.

Keywords: annual report; economic consequences; translation; english; information asymmetry; analyst following; foreign ownership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2011-11-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hec.fr/heccontent/download/4751/114864/ ... e/CR_957_Stolowy.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Economic Consequences of Increasing the International Visibility of Financial Reports (2012)
Working Paper: The Economic Consequences of Increasing the International Visibility of Financial Reports (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebg:heccah:0957

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HEC Research Papers Series from HEC Paris HEC Paris, 78351 Jouy-en-Josas cedex, France. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Antoine Haldemann ().