Legibilidade e custos de agência em empresas brasileiras no novo mercado de governança corporativa

Abstract

The objective of this work is to verify if the readability of the Standardized Financial Statements influences the Agency costs in the Brazilian companies of the Novo Mercado of Corporate Governance. The clarity of the textual narrative is vital for interpreting the information contained in the financial reports and its absence is significant in relation to agency problems. Minimizing these problems tends to reduce costs on the information of these institutions. This study contributes to the literature by analyzing the Brazilian context of readability in entities with Corporate Governance and can contribute to Organs regulatory bodies by analyzing information disclosed by these companies. The research uses the Standardized Financial Statements of 113 companies participating in the Novo Mercado for the period from 2017 to 2018. Using the Flesch reading index as a measurement parameter and involving data displayed in a Panel, descriptive statistics and the results of OLS regressions. to test the readability of the Financial Statements and Agency Costs, the hypothesis is that companies with greater legibility of the statements have lower agency costs. The results showed that by presenting greater legibility in the financial statements, companies also have higher agency costs, rejecting the hypothesis raised in the study and contradicting the premise that readability would decrease these costs in Brazil.