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1、Transparency and Corporate GovernanceMaterialSource:http:/www.hbs.edu/units/am/pdf/HWTransparencyJan2007.pdf Author: Benjamin Hamelin1 AbstractAn objective of many proposed corporate governance reforms is increased transparency. This goal has been relatively uncontroversial, as most observers believ
2、e increased transparency to be unambiguously good. We argue that, from a corporate governance perspective, there are likely to be both costs and benefits to increased transparency, leading to an optimum level beyond which increasing transparency lowers profits. This result holds even when there is n
3、o direct cost of increasing transparency and no issue of revealing information to regulators or product-market rivals. We show that reforms that seek to increase transparency can reduce firm profits, raise executive compensation, and inefficiently increase the rate of CEO turnover. We further consid
4、er the possibility that executives will take actions to distort information. We show that executives could have incentives, due to career concerns, to increase transparency and that increases in penalties for distorting information can be profit reducing.2 IntroductionsIn response to recent corporat
5、e governance scandals, governments have responded by adopted a number of regulatory changes. One component of these changes has been increased disclosure requirements. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley(sox), adopted in response to Enron, WorldCom, and other public governance failures, required detailed re
6、porting of off-balance sheet financing and special purpose entities. Additionally, sox increased the penalties to executives for misreporting. The link between governance and transparency is clear in the publics (and regulators) perceptions; transparency was increased for the purpose of improving go
7、vernance.Yet, most academic discussions about transparency have nothing to do with corporate governance. The most commonly discussed benefit of transparency is that it reduces asymmetric information, and hence lowers the cost of trading the firms securities and the firms cost of capital. To offset t
8、his benefit, commentators typically focus on the direct costs of disclosure, as well as the competitive costs arising because the disclosure provides potentially useful information to product-market rivals. While both of these factors are undoubtedly important considerations in firms disclosure deci
9、sions, they are not particularly related to corporate governance.In this paper, we provide a framework for understanding the role of transparency in corporate governance. We analyze the effect that disclosure has on the contractual and monitoring relationship between the board and the CEO. We view t
10、he quality of information the firm discloses as a choice variable that affects the contracts the firm and its managers. Through its impact on corporate governance, higher quality disclosure both provides benefits and imposes costs. The benefits reflect the fact that more accurate information about p
11、erformance allows boards to make better personnel decisions about their executives. The costs arise because executives have to be compensated for the increased risk to their careers implicit in higher disclosure levels, as well as for the incremental costs they incur trying to distort information in
12、 equilibrium. These costs and benefits complement existing explanations for disclosure. Moreover, because they are directly about corporate governance, they are in line with common perceptions of why firms disclose information.We formalize this idea through an extension of Hamelin and Wasatch (1998)
13、 and Hamelins (2005) adaptation of Hailstorms (1999) career-concerns model to consider the question of optimal transparency. Section 2 lays out the basics of this model, in which the company chooses the “quality” of the performance measure that directors use to assess the CEOs ability. In this model
14、, the optimal quality of information for the firm to reveal can be zero, infinite, or a finite positive value depending on the parameters. When we calibrate the model to reflect actual publicly traded large us corporations, we find that the parameters implied by the calibration lead to a finite valu
15、e for optimal disclosure quality. Thus, our analysis suggests that disclosure requirements going beyond this optimal level are likely to have unintended consequences and to reduce value.We evaluate the implications of penalties and incentives that potentially affect the motives of CEOs to distort th
16、e information coming from their firms. Measures that punish exaggerating effort can be effective if they are sufficiently severe to curtail this effort; however, relatively minor penalties can be counterproductive. In addition, incentives for CEOs to improve the accuracy of information can harm shar
17、eholders because such incentives push a CEO to disclose more than the value-maximizing quantity of information.3 Concealing InformationIn light of some recent corporate scandals, one concern is not that executives distort information, but rather that they conceal it. In this subsection, we briefly a
18、ddress what our analysis can say with respect to concealing information. One question is whether the other players know if the CEO has concealed information? If so, then presumably they can punish the CEO for non-disclosure Moreover, if it is common knowledge that the CEO knows the value of signals
19、that he conceals, then an unraveling argument (Grossman, 1981)applies: Whatever the inferred expected value of unrevealed signals is, the CEO will have an incentive to reveal those above that expected value. Hence, the only equilibrium is one in which unrevealed signals are inferred to have the lowe
20、st possible value and the CEO is correspondingly induced to reveal all signals. We predict therefore that concealment is unlikely to be an issue if the other players know what the set of signals is.Suppose, in contrast, that the other players did not know what the complete set of signals was(e.g., t
21、he set varies over time).If the CEO did not know the realized value when he deciding to reveal or conceal a signal, then he would wish to conceal all signals that he could: more signals means a more precise posterior estimate of his ability, which means greater career risk for him. Our model, thus,
22、predicts that when (i) the CEO has discretion over what signals are revealed and (ii) must commit to reveal or conceal prior to learning the value of the signals, he will choose to commit to conceal all signals over which he has discretion.If, instead, the CEO is not committed to a disclosure decisi
23、on prior to learning the value of the signals, then he will be tempted to reveal those that are favorable to him. The other players will infer that they are getting a biased sample and, thus, make a downward adjustment. In this sense, the situation is similar to that of “exaggerating effort. “The de
24、tails of the analysis are, to be sure, different and await future analysis, but our general conclusions will generally hold.4 Discussions and ConclusionMost corporate governance reforms involve increased transparency. Yet, discussions of disclosure generally focus on issues other than governance, su
25、ch as the cost of capital and product-market competition. The logic of how transparency potentially affects governance is absent from the academic literature.We provide such analysis in this paper. We show that the level of transparency can be understood as deriving from the governance relation betw
26、een the CEO and the board of directors. The directors set the level of transparency (e.g., amount and quality of disclosure) and it is, thus, part of an endogenously chosen governance arrangement.Increasing transparency provides benefits to the firm, but entails costs as well. Better transparency im
27、proves the boards monitoring of the CEO by providing it with an improved signal about his quality. But better transparency is not free: The better able the market is to learn about the CEOs ability, the greater the risk to which the CEO is exposed. In our setting, the profit-maximizing level of tran
28、sparency requires balancing these two factors.Our model implies that there can be an optimal level of transparency. Consequently, attempts to mandate levels beyond this optimum decrease profits. Profits decrease both because managers will have to be paid higher salaries to compensate them for the in
29、creased career risk they face, and because greater transparency increases managerial incentives to engage in costly and counterproductive efforts to distort information. We emphasize that these effects occur in a model in which all other things equal, better information disclosure increases firm val
30、ue.One key assumption we make throughout the paper is that the board relies on the same information that is released to the public in making its monitoring decisions. Undoubtedly, this assumption is literally false in most firms, as the board has access to better information than the public. Nonethe
31、less, CEOs do have incentives to manipulate information transfers to improve the boards perception of them, and this idea has been an important factor in a number of recent studies(see, e.g., Adams and Ferreira, in press).In addition, in a number of publicized cases, boards have been kept in the dar
32、k except through their ability to access publicly disclosed documents; the circumstances in which boards must rely on publicly available information are likely the cases in which the board-CEO relationship is most adversarial, and hence are the cases in which board monitoring is likely most importan
33、t. Certainly, our basic assumption that the quality of public disclosure has a large impact on the boards ability to monitor management is plausible.Our model is set in the context of a board that is perfectly aligned with shareholders interests. One could equally well apply it to direct monitoring
34、by shareholders. If there were an increase in the quality of available information either due to more stringent reporting requirements or because of better analysis (e.g., of the sort performed by institutional investors or a more attentive press),then our model contains clear empirical predictions.
35、 In particular, it suggests that consequences of improved information would be increases in CEO salaries and the rate of CEO turnover. In fact, both CEO salaries and CEO turnover have increased substantially starting in the 1990s, with at least some scholars attributing the increase to the higher le
36、vel of press scrutiny and investor activism (see Kaplan and Minton, 2006).This pattern of CEO salaries and turnover is consistent with our model; moreover, it is consistent with the idea that better information has both costs and benefits through itsimpact on corporate governance.Some issues remain.
37、 As discussed above, we have only scratched the surface with respect to issues of managerial concealment of information. We have abstracted away from any of the concerns about revealing information to rivals or regulators that earlier work has raised. We have also ignored other competing demands for
38、 better information, such as to help better resolve the principal-agent problem through incentive contracts (see e.g., Grossman and Hart, 1983, Singh, 2004).Finally, we have ignored the mechanics of how the firm actually makes information more or less informative (e.g., what accounting rules are use
39、d, what organizational structures, such as reporting lines and office organization, are employed, etc.).While future attention to such details will, we believe, shed additional light on the subject, we remain confident that our general results will continue to hold.译文透明度与公司治理资料来源:哈佛商学院教育网 作者：本杰明埃尔马兰
40、，迈克尔魏斯巴赫1 摘要许多提出的关于公司治理改革的目标是提高透明度。这个目标已比较不会引起争议，因为大多数观察家认为提高透明度还是清楚明确的比较好。我们认为，从公司治理的角度来看，可能存在着成本与效益均提高了透明度，导致超过其最佳水平即提高了透明度却降低了利润。这一结果认为，即使没有提高透明度的直接成本，也没有向监管机构或产品市场竞争对手信息披露的问题。我们的分析表明，改革旨在提高透明度可以减少公司利润，提高管理层薪资水平并提高缺乏能力的首席执行官的离职率。我们应当进一步考虑存在着行政管理人员将采取措施来扭曲信息的可能性。我们的分析表明，由于就业问题管理人员就可以有动力，提高透明度和增加信息
41、的扭曲，从而增加罚金降低利润。2 论文简介对于最近的公司治理丑闻，各国政府已作出回应，并采取了一系列的监管调整措施。这些调整措施的一个组成部分是提高信息披露要求。例如，萨班斯-奥克斯利法案说明，应对安然、世通和其他公共治理的失败，要求对资产负债表表外融资和特殊目的实体进行详细报告。此外，萨班斯-奥克斯利法案中提出增加了管理人员误报的处罚。关于治理与透明度之间的关系，公众和监管机构的看法是明确的，即增加透明度是为了提高治理。然而，大多数关于透明度的学术讨论认为透明度与公司治理没有关系。最常见的关于信息透明度的好处的讨论认为它减少了信息不对称，从而降低了公司证券的交易成本和公司的资本成本。为了弥补
42、这个优势，评论家通常集中在信息披露的直接费用以及产生的竞争力成本上，因为披露可能为产品市场竞争者提供有用的信息。而这两个因素在公司信息披露的决定中无疑是重要的考虑因素，它们并不特别与公司治理相关。在本文中，我们提供了一个了解透明度在公司治理中的作用的框架。我们分析了信息披露在合同方面以及董事会与首席执行官之间的监测方面的作用。我们认为公司信息披露质量作为选择变量影响了合同的企业及其管理者。通过其对公司治理的影响，更高质量的信息披露能提供效益和强加的成本。这些效益反映的事实是更准确的业绩信息能促使董事会做出更好的关于他们的管理人员的人事决定。这些成本的产生是因为管理人员在较高的隐性披露水平时必须
43、取得增加他们事业风险的赔偿，以及他们试图歪曲平衡的信息引发的增量成本。这些成本和效益补充了披露的现有解释。此外，因为他们直接对企业进行治理，在与公司为什么要披露信息的公共看法一致。我们正式通过埃尔马兰，魏兹巴赫（1998），埃尔马兰（2005）扩展了霍姆斯特罗姆（1999）的职业生涯关注模型的适应性的想法是考虑了最优透明度的问题。第二章展示了最基本的模型，在该公司选择绩效的“质量”指标来衡量，从而使董事用来评估首席执行官的能力。在这个模型中，公司的信息披露质量最优可以是零，无限的，或一个有限价值取决于参数。当我们校准模型来反映我们的实际大型上市公司，我们发现所暗示的参数校准导致最优信息披露质量
44、的有限价值。因此，我们的分析表明，信息披露要求超出了这个最佳水平很可能产生意想不到的后果，并减少价值。我们评估的惩罚和奖励可能影响首席执行官的动机去扭曲他们企业的信息。惩罚措施夸大了工作的有效性，如果他们能足够遏制这一努力的话；然而，相对较轻的处罚可能会适得其反。此外，为了提高信息的准确性，首席执行官们的奖励可能会损害股东利益，因为这种激励措施推动首席执行官透露的信息价值最大化的数量更多。3 隐藏信息在最近的一些公司丑闻的曝光中，关心的不是管理人员歪曲信息，而是隐藏信息。在本小节中，我们简单谈谈我们的分析可以说是关于隐瞒信息。一个问题是，如果首席执行官隐藏了信息是否其他参与者都知道？如果是这样
45、，那么他们大概可以惩罚就非公开的首席执行官。此外，如果众所周知，首席执行官知道他隐藏的信号值，进而阐明参数（格罗斯曼，1981）适用于：凡是未显露信号推断预期值时，首席执行官将有动机透露上述那些预期的价值。因此，唯一的均衡是指未透露的信号推断出的可能最低价值和首席执行官相应的诱导显示所有的信号。因此，我们预测隐瞒不太可能是一个问题，如果其他参与者知道什么是信号集合。假设，与此相反，其他参与者不知道什么是一套完整的信号（例如，随时间的变化而异）。如果首席执行官在决定显示或隐藏一个信号时，不知道实现价值，那么他就会想要隐藏他的所有信号：更多的信号是指以更精确的方法估计出的他的能力，这意味着他的职业
46、风险更大。因此，我们的模型预测，（一）当首席执行官决定揭示什么信号，（二）必须承诺事先学习显示或隐藏的信号价值，他会选择隐瞒承诺过的所有信号。相反，如果首席执行官不承诺在作出信息披露决定前学习的信号的价值，那么他将诱导揭示那些对他有利的信息号。其他参与者将推断出他们获得到一个偏差的样本，从而做一个向下调整。在这个意义上说，这种情况是类似的“夸大成果”。 根据分析的细节，可以肯定的是需要等待未来的不同分析，但我们普遍的结论通常会保留。4讨论与结论大多数公司治理改革涉及提高透明度。然而，信息披露的讨论通常集中在披露问题上除了治理问题，如资本成本和产品市场竞争成本。透明度如何潜在地影响治理的逻辑已经
47、在学术文献中缺席了。本文中我们提供这样的分析。我们的分析表明，透明度水平可以理解为由首席执行官与董事会之间的关系产生的治理。董事们设置透明度水平（例如，透明度的量与质），因此，选择了一种内在的治理安排的一部分。提高透明度为公司带来了利益，但也需要成本。通过提高他的质量的信号来提供更好的透明度，从而提高董事会对首席执行官的监测能力。但是更好的透明度不是免费的：更好的市场能够了解首席执行官的能力，并且首席执行官会暴露更大的风险。在我们的设定中，透明度的利润最大化水平需要平衡这两个因素。我们的模型表明有一个透明度的最佳水平。因此，试图超越这个最佳水平会降低利润。利润的减少一方面是因为管理者将不得不支
48、付更高的工资，以弥补他们所面临的更大职业风险，另一方面是因为更高的透明度鼓励管理者从事昂贵的，产生反效果的工作来歪曲信息。我们强调，在一个模型中的影响在其他条件都相同的情况下，更好的信息披露提高公司的价值。我们通过论文提出的一个关键的假设是董事会在做出监察决定时依赖于向公众发布相同的信息。毫无疑问，这种假设在大多数公司里确实是虚假的，因为董事会已经获得了比公众信息更好的信息。不过，首席执行官们有动机操纵信息的传输以提高董事会对他们的看法，而且这一理念在最近的一些研究中被认为是一个重要的因素（例如，亚当斯和费雷拉，印刷中）。此外，在一些公开的案例中，董事会被蒙在鼓里除非通过自己的能力获得公开披露
49、的文件；在何种情况下，董事会必须依靠公开的可用信息，可能是在董事会与首席执行官的关系是最抗拒时，因此，在这种情况下董事会监督可能是最重要的。当然，我们的基本假设是公开披露质量对董事会监督管理者的能力的巨大影响是有理的。我们的模型设定在董事与股东的利益完全一致的情况下。人们可以将它应用于同样也由股东直接监控的公司。如果有一个可用信息质量的提高要么是由于更严格的报告要求，要么是由于更好的分析（例如，由机构投资者或更细心地出版社整理分析），那么我们的模型包含清晰的实证的预测。特别的是，它表明改进信息将提高首席执行官的薪酬和离职率。事实上，首席执行官的薪酬离职率的提高大体上开始于20世纪90年代,至少有一些学者认为应增加新闻审查和提高投资者的积极性（卡普兰，明顿，2006）。这种模式的首席执行官的薪水和离职率与我们的模型是一致的；而且，它的一致观点是更好的信息对公司治理的影响既有成本又有效益。但有些问题任然存在，如上所述，我们只是涉及了有关管理的信息隐藏的表面问题。我们已经忽视了早期工
