This paper provides an investigation of the valuation and agency consequences of corporate governance policy. This is achieved by examining variation in voluntary adoption by Australian listed firms, during the period from 1992 to 2002, of corporate governance frameworks representative of the governance code of practice introduced by the Australian Stock Exchange in 2003. The findings indicate benefits for firms from overall corporate governance structuring, but not in isolation, in line with the requirements now in place, and a significant role played by institutional and external shareholders as alternative agency mechanisms. Corporate governance structure is found to be important, however, the likely impact of disclosure of governance practice or compliance on valuation is less clear. Copyright (c) 2008 The Author Journal compilation (c) 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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This study examines the relationship between voluntary adoption of selected corporate governance mechanisms and accounting conservatism for a sample of firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) over the 11-year period prior to the promulgation of the ASX Corporate Governance Council Good Governance Principles and Best Practice Recommendations in 2003. Using four accounting and market-based accounting conservatism measures, our results provide evidence of both conditional and unconditional conservatism in accounting reporting for Australian firms. We find that voluntary audit committee formation, increasing board independence and decreasing board size are positively associated with unconditional accounting conservatism and negatively related to the degree of conditional conservatism. Our results support the contention that firms voluntarily adopting perceived best practice corporate governance mechanisms employ unconditional accounting conservatism as a complimentary agency control device and are consistent with the observed negative association between the unconditional and conditional forms of accounting conservatism practice.