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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential impact of the approved Australian carbon emissions reduction plan on the cost of capital and the association between companies’ carbon emission intensity and the cost of capital. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of Australian Stock Exchange 200 (ASX 200)-indexed companies from 2006 to 2010 is used. Hypotheses are tested based on Heckman’s two-stage approach. Three regression models are developed to examine the association between carbon emissions and the cost of capital. Findings – Using a sample of ASX 200-indexed listed companies, the paper finds that the cost of capital, including the cost of debt and the cost of equity, will increase for emissions-liable companies. Results also show that the cost of debt is positively correlated with a company’s emission intensity. However, little evidence supports that the emission intensity affects the cost of equity. Originality/value – As it is evident that the emissions reduction plan will adversely affect corporate entities’ cost of capital, this study suggests that companies, investors and lenders need to include carbon emission in risk analysis. An emissions-liable company should establish strategies to combat the impact of the Plan on rising cost that comes with the enforcement of the Plan. Government assistance is essential in the transitional period.

This paper investigates the impact of privatisation on the extent of corporate voluntary disclosure in Jordan. We conduct a longitudinal examination using 243 annual reports of 27 privatised firms in Jordan over a period of nine years from 1996 to 2004. Employing univariate and pooled regression models our results show that privatisation is positively associated with voluntary disclosure. Specifically, we find that accounting regulation reforms and foreign investments accompanying privatisation have a significant impact on the levels of accounting disclosure in Jordan. Our study provides evidence on the role of privatisation in improving the disclosure culture as an important pre-condition for the development of active capital markets.

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -This study attempts to examine the issues relating to corporate financial reporting of Chinese listed companies under specified institutional settings as companies with different share-categories are required to prepare annual reports under various General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Design/methodology/approach -This study selects Chinese companies that issue negotiable shares to examine whether corporate disclosure patterns are different under various institutional settings. Negotiable shares can be traded on stock exchanges and are divided into A-, B-and H-shares. The extent of corporate disclosure is obtained from the content analysis of annual reports for 191 sampled Chinese listed companies with various share categories. The association are hypothesized and tested between the level of corporate disclosure and the following corporate determinants: company size, profitability, auditor, leverage, industry and ownership structure. Findings -The extensive regulations and different standards influence on disclosures of companies with foreign investment participation and overseas listing status. By reconciliation of their annual reports according to the IFRSs or the GAAP of the listing country, these companies increased information disclosure voluntarily in order to enhance their reputation and credibility. Some corporate factors, such as company size, profitability and the size of auditor, have influenced the level of corporate disclosure in annual reports of domestic and foreign share-based companies. Ownership structure has positive impact on the level of disclosure for companies with domestic investors. Originality/value -This study advances knowledge of the influence that legislative circumstances and ownership structures can have on disclosure decisions made by management in their annual reports. This information is of high interest to domestic and foreign investors and regulators in understanding of financial reporting in Chinese listed companies.

Purpose -Kato & Long state that executive compensation has attracted much attention from economists in the past two decades yet most academic work on executive compensation has been concentrated on a few developed countries such as the USA and the UK, mainly due to data availability. In light of the mounting interest in the vital role that corporate governance may play in economic development, however, it is of considerable importance to study how firms in developing countries compensate their top executives. In particular, for transition economies struggling to transform their state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into profitable modern firms through various reform measures, the provision of efficient managerial incentives is a crucial ingredient of the successful transition of the economy. Since executive pay-performance link represents the bulk of managerial incentives for top management, a closer look at the nature of pay-performance link for top management in transitional economies will provide much needed information for the evaluation of the current reform effort and the designing of future reform measures. This paper seeks to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach -A review of available literature for this topic was sourced, collated and summarised. Findings -The significant pay-performance link for top management in China's listed firms is overall encouraging news for current policy makers in China, who consider public listing in the stock market as a key mechanism of achieving such a goal for large SOEs. However, not all news is good. Perhaps most importantly, they have found that government ownership of China's listed firms is weakening pay-performance link for top managers and thus possibly making China's listed firms less effective in solving the agency problem. Originality/value -Taken in context with other literature and research, this paper provides an insight into the link between Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and other publicly listed firms and executive remuneration.