Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether Financial Reporting Quality (FRQ), Corporate Governance and IFRS affect investment efficiency of French listed companies.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a sample of 125 French firms listed on the CAC All Tradable index between 2008 and 2017, the study uses Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) regressions to examine the relationship between FRQ and firms' investment efficiency.

Findings

The findings show that FRQ plays a role in reducing overinvestment and does not affect underinvestment, suggesting that in a code-law country, informal and personal relationships tend to replace the role of financial reports in mitigating information asymmetry. The results also reveal that the relationship between FRQ and investment efficiency increases with better corporate governance and with the implementation of IFRS. However, the results provide no evidence between incentives to minimize profits for tax purposes and firms' underinvestment and continues to be negative for overinvesting companies that have more incentives to manage their earnings for tax purposes.

Research limitations/implications

Our study has some limitations. First, we only examine listed firms, so the results cannot be generalized to unlisted companies that represent the vast majority of French economic activity. Second, this research does not distinguish between government companies and private companies. The two types of companies have different governance mechanisms, financial reporting, disclosure environment and concentration of ownership.

Practical implications

This study suggests that in a code-law country with weak investor protection, FRQ acts as a governance mechanism by mitigating asymmetric information and improving firms' investment decisions.

Originality/value

The relationship between FRQ and investment efficiency has been widely examined for companies in “common law” countries. This study extends the scarce evidence of this relation to companies in a code-law country. It also builds on previous research by introducing new factors never discussed before that could change this relationship, namely corporate governance, IFRS implementation and tax purposes.

中文翻译：

---

大陆会计系统中公司治理和国际财务报告准则对财务报告质量和投资效率关系的影响

目的

本文的目的是调查财务报告质量（FRQ）、公司治理和国际财务报告准则是否影响法国上市公司的投资效率。

设计/方法/方法

该研究基于 2008 年至 2017 年间在 CAC All Tradable 指数中列出的 125 家法国公司的样本，使用可行的广义最小二乘 (FGLS) 回归来检验 FRQ 与公司投资效率之间的关系。

发现

研究结果表明，FRQ 在减少过度投资方面发挥了作用，但不会影响投资不足，这表明在法典国家，非正式和个人关系往往会取代财务报告在减轻信息不对称方面的作用。结果还表明，FRQ 和投资效率之间的关系随着公司治理的改善和 IFRS 的实施而增加。然而，结果没有提供证据表明出于税收目的而最小化利润的动机与公司的投资不足，并且对于那些出于税收目的而有更多动机来管理其收益的过度投资的公司来说仍然是负面的。

研究限制/影响

我们的研究有一些限制。首先，我们只考察上市公司，因此不能将结果推广到代表法国绝大多数经济活动的非上市公司。其次，本研究没有区分政府公司和私营公司。两类公司在治理机制、财务报告、披露环境和所有权集中度等方面存在差异。

实际影响

本研究表明，在投资者保护薄弱的法规国家中，FRQ 通过减轻不对称信息和改善公司的投资决策来充当治理机制。

原创性/价值

对于“普通法”国家的公司，FRQ 和投资效率之间的关系已得到广泛研究。本研究将这种关系的稀缺证据扩展到法典国家的公司。它还建立在先前研究的基础上，引入了以前从未讨论过的可能改变这种关系的新因素，即公司治理、IFRS 实施和税收目的。