Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question/Issue: This paper examines the influence of corporate governance on risk disclosure practices in the UK and Italy and also studies the impact of those practices on market liquidity. co_823 3.24 Research Findings/Insights: We find that governance factors principally influence the decisions of UK (Italian) firms over whether to exhibit risk information voluntarily (mandatorily) in their annual report narratives. When we distinguish between firms with strong and weak governance (in terms of board efficiency) in each country, we find that the factors that affect mandatory and voluntary risk disclosure appear to be driven more by strongly governed firms in both countries. Furthermore, in the UK, we find that voluntary and mandatory risk disclosure improves market liquidity significantly by reducing information asymmetry. Moreover, strongly governed firms in the UK tend to provide more meaningful risk information to their investors than weakly governed firms. In Italy, however, we find that strongly rather than weakly governed firms exhibiting risk information voluntarily rather than mandatorily improves market liquidity significantly. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This paper emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between mandatory and voluntary risk disclosure when studying the impact of corporate governance. Our findings differ across strongly and weakly governed firms, in terms of both the factors that influence risk disclosure practices and the exact informativeness of those practices. Furthermore, the findings support the view that disclosing risk information in the narrative sections of annual reports is seen as more credible in the UK than in Italy as such information is likely to be more strongly related to investors' price decisions in the UK than in Italy. Practitioner/Policy Implications: The results support the current regulatory trend in risk reporting within the UK that emphasizes the importance of directors and encourages rather than mandates risk disclosure. However, the results generally signal a need for further improvements in the Italian context. Our evidence also supports the value of the confidence in the UK governance system, compared to that in Italy, which motivates British firms to provide highly informative risk information more often than Italian firms. Keywords: Automated Textual Content Analysis; Corporate Governance; Mandatory and Voluntary Risk Disclosure; Usefulness of Risk DisclosureThis is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Corporate Governance: An International Review, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/corg.12095/abstract]. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving. INTRODUCTIONA significant body of literature demonstrates that the monitoring function of corporate governance significantly influences the propensity for better disclosure (Bushman & Smith, 2001;Sloan, 2001;Kanagaret...

Purpose Few studies have focused on emerging markets owing to difficulties in identifying the real effect of disclosures on these economies. To fill this gap, the purpose of this paper is to first: investigate the main drivers for risk disclosure quality for Chinese financial firms, second: further study the impact of such disclosure on market liquidity. Design/methodology/approach The sample comprises all financial firms listed in the Shanghai A-shares market for the period 2013–2015. By relying on manual content analysis of annual reports, the risk disclosure quality is measured through a multidimensional approach which encompasses three factors: quantity of disclosure, coverage of disclosure and the semantic properties of depth and outlook. The findings of this paper are based on ordinary least squares and fixed-effects estimations. Findings The findings suggest that firm characteristics (especially size) influence risk disclosure practices of Chinese financial companies. Furthermore, the authors found that risk disclosure quality has an impact on market liquidity, and when the authors analysed each year the authors noticed that the results were driven by the year 2013; moreover, the authors noticed no or little significance from the period of the emerging financial crisis. Research limitations/implications The sample of this paper is limited to financial firms in China. The usage of manual content analysis limits the authors’ ability to investigate risk reporting drivers and its impact on market liquidity on a large scale. Practical implications The importance of this paper stems from documenting several reporting incentives concerning not only firms’ quantity, but also firms’ quality of risk reporting. Collectively, the findings support activism for reforms and the enhancement of regulations in China in order to make the market more efficient. Originality/value This paper provides new evidence for financial companies in China on the principal drivers for risk disclosure quality and highlights how the quality of such disclosure impacts market liquidity. Furthermore, this paper confirms previous findings on the Chinese market (Ball et al., 2000; Zou and Adams, 2008) in which, given a decreasing but still strong state presence, there is higher stock volatility and weak corporate governance.

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We examine the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the financial reporting quality of US firms over 1999-2015. We use accruals-based earnings management as a proxy for financial reporting quality and the index of Baker et al. (Quart J Econ 131:1539-1636, 2016 as an EPU measure to show that they exhibit a positive and significant association. We also find a causal effect by employing three political polarization instruments for EPU. In a cross-sectional analysis, we further show that the positive relationship between EPU and earnings management strengthens for firms operating in politically sensitive industries, for firms in more financial distress, and during recessionary periods. We also provide evidence that increased financial constraints facilitate the positive relationship between EPU and earnings management. These findings are robust to the use of alternative measures of economic policy uncertainty and when we employ real earnings management as a dependent variable. These results indicate that managers aim to provide outsiders with an improved financial position of the company when EPU is high. Our findings suggest that investors, analysts, creditors, and regulators should be wary of firms' financial reporting quality in periods of high economic policy uncertainty.