Relação entre o nível de corrupção percebida dos países e a complexidade dos relatórios contábeis

Abstract

Corruption is considered as a complex phenomenon that creates obstacles for the society development. In an accounting approach, the corruption occurs through accounting manipulations, where managers intend to present unreliable information about the company financial and equity situation, so that complexity can be used to overshadow the company's performance. The objective of this study is to identify the relationship between the levels of perceived corruption in the countries and the complexity of the accounting reports disclosed by companies in those countries in order to find the impact of the countries perceived corruption on the complexity of the accounting reports of their companies. The present study sample covered 35 countries and 269 companies. In order to carry out the study, the Perceived Corruption Indexes (PCI) of the countries were collected and the Gunning Fog Index program was used to measure and classify the complexity of the explanatory notes of the companies' reports, as well as the control variables size, profitability, audit performed by Big Four, legal system and adoption of IFRS, seeking to identify the impact of these variables on the reports complexity. The results show that there is no statistically significant relationship between the levels of perceived corruption and the complexity of the accounting reports in the sample of this study. Among the control variables, only adoption of IFRS is related to complexity, and it is possible to state, for this sample, that countries adopting IFRS tend to have less complexity in their companies' accounting reports. It was concluded that the levels of countries perceived corruption are not related to the complexity of the accounting reports disclosed by their companies. Therefore, the perceived corruption of these countries does not affect the complexity of their companies reports trading on the NYSE.