Research On The Influence Of Exchange Annual Report Inquiry Letter On Accounting Information Transparency

Accounting information,as an important vehicle to reflect the operation of enterprises,plays a vital role in the stable development of the capital market and the orderly operation of the social economy.In the real environment,the speed at which the regulatory regime for information disclosure is updated hardly matches the pace of change in the market environment,resulting in a serious information mismatch between companies and stakeholders and a high incidence of corporate financial fraud.To effectively address the problems of inadequate and low quality information disclosure by market participants,the Stock Exchange has established an ex-post monitoring mechanism for information disclosure with the supervision of enquiry letters as the core.The receipt of an annual report enquiry letter means that there are “omissions” in the annual report disclosed to the public,which the company has to explain.Compared with the traditional administrative regulatory system,which is mandatory and lagging,the annual report enquiry letter is professional and timely,thus attracting widespread attention from market participants and becoming a hot topic for academic research.The research sample of this paper was selected from A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2020,and a multiple regression model was constructed to analyze and study the impact of exchange annual report enquiry letters on the transparency of accounting information,as well as the moderating effects of the nature of ownership,level of internal control and separation of powers on the relationship between annual report enquiry letters and the transparency of accounting information.In a further analysis,the impact of the severity of the nature of the annual report enquiry letter on the transparency of the company’s accounting information was tested.My main findings are as follows: Firstly,annual report enquiry letters have an enhancing effect on the transparency of accounting information of the recipient companies.Secondly,the effect of annual report enquiry letters on the transparency of accounting information is more significant among non-state-owned enterprises,enterprises with low level of internal control and enterprises with separation of powers.Thirdly,the more serious the nature of annual report enquiry letters,the more beneficial it is to improve the transparency of accounting information of the companies.By examining the relationship between exchange annual report letters of inquiry and the transparency of accounting information,and the heterogeneity of their impact given the differences in the nature of ownership,the level of internal control and the state of separation of powers,we further expand the research related to the regulatory mechanism of annual report letters of inquiry.It serves as an inspiration for promoting the reform of the securities market regulatory system and protecting the relevant rights and interests of investors,and also provides a useful reference for exploiting the synergy effect of the internal and external governance mechanisms of the company.The sample data of this study can be updated continuously with the accumulation of the years in which the inquiry letters are made public,and subsequent studies can be conducted on other types of inquiry letters and their information characteristics such as opinion letters and concern letters issued by exchanges to further expand the research area.