*3.1. Study's Data*

In this study, we apply firm-level data from Estonia and the population includes 77,212 unique private SMEs, accounting for roughly 50% of all Estonian private SMEs registered at the end of 2014. While we did not include large and/or listed firms in the analysis, some additional contractions were made to the whole population of firms. Namely, we do not include firms having (at least some) corporate owners or foreign individuals as managers/owners, as in case of them we are not able to calculate (all) the variables documented in Section 3.3. In addition, we are not including firms lacking an annual report because of not being obliged to submit it for different reasons (e.g., a firm is too young or in the liquidation procedure). All information obtained is factual and originates from the Estonian Business Register (see also Sections 3.2 and 3.3). The median firm in the analysis is 7.3 years old and a micro firm by size (i.e., total assets 22 thousand euros). Thus, the median firm in the population refers to an older micro firm, which dominates the firms' population in other countries as well. In the case of all firms, we consider the annual report submission delay for the fiscal year of 2014 and corporate governance variables are calculated from the last day firms had to present the annual report (for the vast majority of cases that date is 30 June 2015). The boards and owners of SMEs change infrequently,

thus the usage of a single year is justified. Despite the latter, the TADV behaviour can vary through reporting years, and thus, in order to guarantee the robustness of the results with respect to the year chosen for the analysis (i.e., 2014), we check the results for another fiscal year (i.e., 2015) as well.
