Firm-Level Incentives and the Informativeness of Accounting Reports : An Experiment in Brazil

We complement recent research (Ball et al. 2003) which suggests that country-level incentives (i.e. legal origin and the level of capital market development) are the main determinants of the quality of financial reporting. Using a newly developed Brazilian Corporate Governance Index (BCGI) we perform an experiment in the poor quality accounting and governance Brazilian environment. We find that superior governance practices at the firm-level and cross-listing have a first-order effect on the informativeness of accounting reports. The earnings quality of Brazilian firms with good governance is similar to the quality previously reported for firms based in common law developed countries