Bushman, Piotroski and Smith (2004) distinguished between two elements of Corporate Transparency: Governance Transparency and Financial Transparency. The factors of financial disclosure are segments, r&d, capex, accounting policies and subsidiaries. Meanwhile, the factors of governance disclosure are major shareholders, management, boards, director and officer's remuneration and officer's shareholdings.

The results of their study is very interesting. They found that financial transparency is correlated with political economy, while governance transparency is correlated to legal systems. Financial transparency is higher in states where state ownership of enterprises and bank is low while governance transparency is higher in common law systems compared to civil law tradition.

One of the explanation for this result is because governance transparency is highly dependent of efficient judicial system and legal framework, and it appears, civil law countries are not that efficient with respect to their judicial system. 

 

On the qualitative side, it will be interesting to evaluate if legal frameworks in civil law countries are -- independently of the efficiency of their judicial systems -- adequate with respect to corporate reporting.  It would also be interesting to see if this situation in civil law tradition can be rectified using both mandatory and voluntary disclosure policies combined with incentive.