The Relationship between Board Structure and Information Content of Accounting Earnings

The primary objective of this study is to show that board structure affects the value relevance of earnings. The role of board structure is to reduce the conflicts of interests between shareholders and managers. Four attributes of board structure includes Board size, CEO membership, Duality and Board independence are considered in this study. These attributes are used in this study to assess the impact of board structure on information content of accounting earnings. Information dynamics models, such as the Ohlson (1995) model provide a testable pricing equation that also identifies the role non-accounting information (i.e. corporate governance) plays in determining firm value. Based on Ohlson’s (1995) model, the change in value model, as developed by Easton and Harris (1991), is modified to include the proposed interaction between board structure and earnings management. In order to hypothesis testing, the pooled GLS regression is employed as the primary technique to estimate the coefficients. These coefficients are then examined using the Wald test to find out whether the earnings response coefficients after incorporating indictors of earnings reliability are significantly different from the earnings response coefficients irrespective of any propositions. The sample was drawn from listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) for the years 1383 to 1387. The final sample contained 675 firm-year observations. The results reveal that board structure have no effect on information content of accounting earnings.