Worker information and firm disclosure: Analysis on French linked employer-employee data

Information disclosure requirements significantly increased in French listed companies in the early 2000s, converging toward the U.S./U.K. stock market standards. Following the burgeoning literature on relations between corporate governance and labor, we investigate the consequences of this process regarding worker information: does more information for shareholders mean more information for workers? We take advantage of a French (representative) establishment survey that generates linked 'employer–employee' data at two points in time, 1998 and 2004. Our results strongly suggest that worker information has improved in listed companies but not in private ones, as an externality of the financialization process. We find however that this extra information is only partially correlated with greater employee satisfaction, as measured through the perception of fair recognition by supervisors.