Do powerful CEOs affect qualitative financial disclosure? Evidence from accounting comparability

This study investigates the relationship between CEO power and financial statement comparability. Using a sample of A-listed Chinese firms for 2005–2020, we document a positive relationship between powerful CEOs and comparability. We further examined the impact of media coverage on comparability and its moderating role in the relationship between CEO power and comparability. Our results suggest that media coverage leads to higher comparability and reinforces the positive association between powerful CEO and comparability. Additionally, the positive association between CEO power and comparability is contingent on the gender of CEOs and is reversed under higher economic policy uncertainty. Our findings support the transparency argument, the quiet life hypothesis, and the media's governance role. These results are robust to alternative measures of CEO power, comparability, econometric methods, and endogeneity.