Corporate Governance and Risk Disclosure Quality:  Evidence from Saudi Arabia      Abstract Purpose: This study aims to investigate the nature, extent, and the potential influence of Corporate Governance (CG), ownership structure, and corporate characteristics on Risk Disclosure (RD) quality in a developing country that lacks research in this area, Saudi Arabia. Methodology: This study examines197 annual reports of Saudi non-financial-listed firms during 2012-2013.We apply the manual content and multiple regression analyses. We use the number of the risk-related sentences as a proxy for RD quality. Findings: The results indicate that the mean of RD is 9 sentences with a minimum of zero and a maximum of 31 sentences, which implies that the RD level in Saudi Arabia is very low. The analysis also shows that dual role, firm complexity, firm size, firm age, and state ownership are positive determinants of RD, while firm leverage the only negative determinant. However, we find no significant correlations between board independence, audit committee effectiveness, auditor type (Big-4), firm profitability, and institutional ownership and RD level. Originality/value: This study is interesting since it fills the gaps in the disclosure literature, especially in the developing and Arab countries, and responds to calls of several prior studies, such as Dobler et al. (2011), Ntim et al. (2013), and Moumen et al. (2015) that recommend investigating the corporate governance determinants of RD quality. The results of this study are of interest to accounting setters and governance regulators. The study also provides an evaluation the Saudi CG code formally applied in 2007.

Keywords:Risk disclosure, Corporate Governance, Ownership Structure, Content Analysis, Saudi Arabia