Corporate debt market is crucial to raise capital for businesses and to maintain steady economic growth. Disclosure with more complete accounting information provides more informative signals for investors to assess a firm’s risk of defaulting on its debt, which is the fundamental mechanism of the seminal theory by Duffie and Lando [2001, Term Structures of Credit Spreads with Incomplete Accounting Information, Econometrica 69(3), 633–664]. Using a disclosure quality measure that captures the completeness of accounting information in the income statement and balance sheet, we show that a firm’s default risk is significantly and negatively associated with the completeness of its accounting information. We further show that the negative relation is mainly driven by the information completeness of the balance sheet, relative to that of the income statement. In addition, the information completeness of the long-term liabilities on the balance sheet better explains a firm’s default risk, compared to the current liabilities. Overall, our findings provide new evidence on the importance of accounting information completeness for both firms and investors in the debt market.

公司债务市场对于企业筹集资金和保持经济稳定增长至关重要。披露更完整的会计信息可为投资者提供更多信息信号，以评估公司的债务违约风险，这是 Duffie 和 Lando 开创性理论的基本机制 [2001 年，会计信息不完整的信用利差期限结构，计量经济学69（3），633-664]。使用捕获损益表和资产负债表中会计信息完整性的披露质量度量，我们表明公司的违约风险与其会计信息的完整性显着负相关。我们进一步表明，负相关主要是由资产负债表相对于损益表的信息完整性驱动的。此外，与流动负债相比，资产负债表上长期负债的信息完整性更好地解释了公司的违约风险。总的来说，我们的研究结果提供了新的证据，证明会计信息完整性对公司和债务市场投资者的重要性。