Corporate disclosure and credit market development

The nexus between corporate disclosure and credit market development as well as whether the nexus is sensitive to the income classification of countries is not well delineated in the empirical literature. The objective of this paper is to interrogate these issues. In addressing these important issues, we rely on a panel of 122 countries and deploy a battery of econometric techniques. Generally, we find that corporate disclosure promotes credit market development. The results from the analysis of subsamples suggest that the effect of corporate disclosure on credit market development is sensitive to creditor rights protection and the income status of a country. In particular, there is evidence that the interaction between corporate disclosure and creditor rights protection significantly benefits the credit markets only in upper-middle-income countries.