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This study investigates the impact of the enhanced continuous disclosure regime introduced in December 2002 on several measures of information risk in NZX‐listed stocks. We employ two microstructure models and an intraday data set to measure information risk in a sample of 71 stocks. Our empirical results show that the reforms enacted in December 2002 had no significant effect on either the level of information‐based trading or the adverse selection component of market spreads in our sample of NZX‐listed stocks.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the introduction of New Zealand's statutory‐backed continuous disclosure regime enacted in December 2002 on the differential disclosure behaviour of New Zealand firms with good and bad earnings news.

This paper examines the level of information disclosure, analyst forecast error and forecast dispersion, abnormal returns and abnormal volumes for firms with good and bad news earnings announcements in a sample period surrounding reforms to New Zealand's continuous disclosure regime.

The authors find evidence that the pre‐announcement information flow was poorer prior to the reform for bad news firms compared to good news firms, in terms of greater analysts' forecast dispersion and a larger abnormal price reaction to the actual earnings announcement. Second, the reform reduced the asymmetry of information flow between good and bad news firms, with the differences in analysts' forecast dispersion and abnormal price reaction dissipating after the reform.

The findings suggest that the reforms to New Zealand's continuous disclosure regime have reduced managers' propensity to withhold bad news and improved the quality of information provided to investors by firms with bad earnings news.

This study improves our understanding of the impact of disclosure reform on the behaviour of managers in a market with relatively low liquidity and less litigation risk in comparison to larger and more developed markets.

This paper aims to examine how issue spreads are determined in the New Zealand commercial paper market both before and after the onset of the global financial crisis.

This paper uses regression analysis on data from 1,340 commercial paper tenders conducted by 26 issuers between mid-2003 and mid-2011 to explore how credit risk and liquidity factors impact on issue spreads.

Prior to March 2008, issue spreads are higher when issuers have a weaker credit rating, risk aversion is high and investor appetite for the issue is low. There is no term premium in issue spreads. After March 2008, credit ratings have no influence on issue spreads, while the influence of risk aversion is weaker. Issue spreads are more sensitive to the investor appetite and the term of the issue. Investors assign higher spreads to issues made by securitisation conduits despite these entities retaining the highest possible short-term credit rating, reflecting the erosion of confidence in credit ratings on asset-backed securities.

This is the first published study of the New Zealand commercial paper market. The results show that since the onset of the global financial crisis, investor perceptions of credit risk have played a more important role in the determination of issue spreads than short-term credit ratings. This is consistent with a loss of confidence in credit ratings on asset-backed securities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the proposition that unexplained price and volume movements detected by the New Zealand Exchange's (“NZX”) surveillance staff reflect speculative trading.

The paper examines a sample of 98 price queries issued by the NZX between 1996 and 2004 where the company responded with a “no news” announcement to the NZX query. The sample is partitioned between queries of price increases and queries of price decreases. A market model is employed to estimate abnormal returns over the event window period [−30, 30] where day 0 is the date the price query is issued.

The paper finds evidence of large abnormal returns in the immediate pre‐query period but only a partial reversal in the post‐query period following the “no news” announcements.

The absence of a full reversal of the pre‐query abnormal return is interpreted as evidence that prices are being set by informed traders rather than by uninformed or speculative traders. Further research is required to determine whether this reflects breaches of either the continuous disclosure regime or insider trading regulations.

The paper presents the first systematic analysis of the NZX's price query system. The empirical results show that price movements that generate price queries and subsequent “no news” announcements should not be dismissed as mere speculation.

This study examines factors related to audit committee membership for a sample of large New Zealand listed companies. This study reveals that non‐executive directors who are independent, and directors with financial expertise, are more likely to be members of audit committees. The results are consistent with the New Zealand Securities Commission’s corporate governance guidelines for audit committees of New Zealand listed companies. However, in the current New Zealand regulatory environment, directors with accounting expertise can include non‐executives affiliated with the firm. In these situations the financial expert is not independent. Remuneration committee members are found more likely to be members of the audit committee. This may be a result of their power and influence or be due to the skills they bring. The number of years that directors serve on the board, the number of other directorships they hold, and the number of shares they own in the company are not related to audit committee membership.

This paper aims to examine whether firms with high information asymmetry disclose more information under a continuous disclosure regime, and, second, the paper examines whether continuous disclosures reduce information asymmetry.

The study models relations between continuous disclosures and information asymmetry using ordinary least squares regression and two-stage least squares regression.

The study finds firms with high information asymmetry disclose more information. Further, the study finds that disclosure in the presence of high information asymmetry increases asymmetry. Finally, while bad news increases information asymmetry, the disclosure of firm-specific good and bad news is associated with reduced information asymmetry.

The paper identifies conditions under which Continuous Disclosure Regime increases information in markets and influences information asymmetry.

This paper was motivated by the current debate over the voluntary approach to environmental disclosures in corporate annual reports and assesses the effectiveness of the current policy of voluntarism in the UK. A brief review of the relevant theories, which explain why managers might choose to voluntarily provide environmental responsibility information to parties outside the organisation, is presented. With this background, the paper then questions whether the UK government’s faith in voluntarism and the pursuit of best practice will be enough to generate any real change in current environmental reporting practices. We argue that voluntarism is not effective and that there is an urgent need to introduce strict governmental regulations on the information that must be disclosed and the form in which it should be presented in corporate annual reports as have been established in several other countries. In addition, further consideration is needed to achieve reforms in academic accounting education in order to improve corporate accountability and transparency in corporate annual reports. Organisations need to respond to the growing demands for corporate social and environmental responsibility and this will be possible with the support of an accounting profession that takes a more proactive approach to engaging with stakeholders. For this to happen, we need to rethink the focus of accounting and business education. We must move away from the dominant model, which treats accountancy as a set of techniques, towards a more holistic approach which recognises the social and environmental impacts of organisational activity.

This paper aims to examine the price-sensitivity of information under capital market disclosure regulation, the Australian continuous disclosure regulation (CDR).

The study tests the information content of continuous disclosures and identifies the firm characteristics that condition the price-sensitivity of information under CDR.

The study provides evidence that continuous firm disclosures are significantly associated with stock price adjustment to information. Further results are consistent with firm disclosure and its information content being determined by the economics of the firm.

The findings of the study support the introduction of ongoing and continuous disclosure regimes in a number of capital markets, and assist firms and regulators model the price-sensitivity of information under CDR.

The study highlights the sources of an informed market, and contributes to our understanding of the conditions under which the CDR reveals unexpected information. The results provide evidence of an association between firm disclosure and stock price synchronicity, consistent with managerial incentives to disclose information.