An analysis of the effect of board characteristics and governance indices on the quality of accounting information

The objective of this study is to examine the effect on the quality of accounting information published by Canadian firms of board of directors’ characteristics compared to that of governance indices that measure board quality. We find that the majority of board characteristics have an important and significant effect on the levels of earnings management and accounting conservatism. On the other hand, in the case of the studied attributes of the quality of accounting information, we find that the effect of governance indices that assess the quality of boards of directors is not clearly established. Particularly, our results reveal that individual measures of the characteristics of boards of directors allow for a better detection and explanation of the quality of accounting information than do multi-factor commercial and academic governance indices