Decentralization and corruption: evidence from primary health-care programmes

The aim of this article is to evaluate whether there is an association between decentralization and corruption. In order to do so we analyse Brazilian health-care programmes that are run locally. To construct objective measures of corruption, we use the information from the reports of the auditing programme of the local governments of Brazil. Results point that there is no relationship between decentralization and corruption, whatever the measure of decentralization used.

Discretionary-based disclosure: evidence from the Brazilian market

The primary objective of this paper is to identify the factors that explain Brazilian companies level of voluntary disclosure. Underpinning this work is the Discretionary-based Disclosure theory. The sample is composed of the top 100 largest non-financial companies listed in the Bolsa de Valores de São Paulo (Brazilian Securities, Commodities, and Futures exchange - BOVESPA). Information was gathered from Financial Statements for the years ending in 2006, 2007, and 2008, with the use of content analysis. A disclosure framework based on 27 studies from these years was created, with a total of 92 voluntary items divided into two dimensions: economic (43) and socio-environmental (49). Based on the existing literature, a total of 12 hypotheses were elaborated and tested using a panel data approach. Results evidence that: (a) Sector and Origin of Control are statistically significant in all three models tested: economic, socio-environmental, and total; (b) Profitability is relevant in the economic model and in the total model; (c) Tobin s Q is relevant in the socio-environmental model and in the total disclosure model; (d) Leverage and Auditing Firm are only relevant in the economic disclosure model; (e) Size, Governance, Stock Issuing, Growth Opportunities and Concentration of Control are not statistically significant in any of the three models.