The Impact of Political Connections and Voluntary Disclosure in Tehran Stock Exchange

Voluntary disclosure is a surplus information on the legal requirement that includes financial and non-financial information for the more clarity of the company's processes. Voluntary disclosure as a kind of informed mechanism may be associated with different processes in the company. As a result, companies, based on the composition of their board of directors, make decisions about the voluntary disclosure of information and may vary according to the type of political and non-political directors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of political connection on the information voluntary disclosure in companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. In this regard, numbers of 124 companies were selected for the period from 2012 to 2017. To measure voluntary disclosure, the Botosan (1997) checklist and for measuring political connections, political cost index from Faccio (2006) has been used. The panel data approach was also used to test the research hypotheses. The results showed that political connection has a negative and significant effect on the voluntary disclosure of information. In fact, companies that have more political connection are more inclined to voluntarily disclose information.