Determinants of the Governance Disclosure Scores of the Publicly Traded Rail Companies

Abstract

The number of listed rail companies has been increasing due to the liberalization, commercialization, and privatization tendencies. This trend in turn creates problems regarding the transperancy, public disclosure, and corporate governance of the publicly traded rail companies. The aim of this study is predicting the determinants of the governance disclosure scores of the publicly traded rail companies. Our findings, using a sample of 34 rail companies from 7 countries over the 2005-2017 period, suggest that board size, percentage of outside directors, company size, and financial leverage have a positive association with the governance disclosure scores whereas rail companies founded in civil law countries are likely to have lower governance disclosure score than those established in the common law countries.