Socialized charitable foundations and accounting information quality

Abstract

Separating the functions of the government from those of charitable foundations is a common concern of regulators and scholars. Taking the foundations from 2006 to 2014 as a sample, we investigated the economic consequences of socialising charitable foundations from the perspective of accounting information quality. Empirical results show that the accounting information quality of socialised foundations is higher than that of non-socialised ones. It is still tenable after endogeneity is taken into account. The results of cross-sectional test indicate that the difference between the accounting information quality of socialised and non-socialised foundations becomes more significant when their regional institutional environment is relatively bad, when they are local foundations, when they raise funds publicly, and when they fail to engage top-100 accounting firms in audits. The conclusion provides empirical support for China to improve the information disclosure systems of charitable foundations and to promote their socialising transformation.