Financial Accounting Information and Corporate Governance

This paper reviews and proposes additional research concerning the role of publicly reported financial accounting information in the governance processes of corporations. We first review and analyze research on the use of financial accounting measures in managerial incentive plans and explore future research directions. We then propose that governance research be extended to explore more comprehensively the use of financial accounting information in additional corporate control mechanisms, and suggest opportunities for expanding such research in the U.S. and abroad, including the consideration of interactions among control mechanisms. We also propose research to investigate more directly the effects of financial accounting information on economic performance through its role in governance and more generally using a cross-country approach.