This study examines the effect of the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on voluntary disclosure. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we document a significant increase in the likelihood and frequency of management earnings forecasts following mandatory IFRS adoption, consistent with the notion that IFRS adoption alters firms' disclosure incentives in response to increased capital-market demand. We find the increase to be larger among firms domiciled in code-law countries, suggesting a catching-up effect among firms facing low disclosure incentives pre-adoption. We then propose and test three channels through which IFRS adoption could alter firms' disclosure incentives: improved earnings quality, increased shareholder demand, and increased analyst demand. We find evidence consistent with all three channels.The appendix to "Mandatory Financial Reporting and Voluntary Disclosure: The Effect of Mandatory IFRS Adoption on Management Forecasts" may be found here: 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2767001' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2767001.
This study examines the effect of the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on voluntary disclosure. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we document a significant increase in the likelihood and frequency of management earnings forecasts following mandatory IFRS adoption, consistent with the notion that IFRS adoption alters firms' disclosure incentives in response to increased capital-market demand. We find the increase to be larger among firms domiciled in code-law countries, suggesting a catching-up effect among firms facing low disclosure incentives pre-adoption. We then propose and test three channels through which IFRS adoption could alter firms' disclosure incentives: improved earnings quality, increased shareholder demand, and increased analyst demand. We find evidence consistent with all three channels.The paper "Mandatory Financial Reporting and Voluntary Disclosure: The Effect of Mandatory IFRS Adoption on Management Forecasts" may be found here: 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2766981' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2766981.
This thesis is comprised of two essays that explore how investors' uncertainty over financial reporting quality influences firms' voluntary disclosures. I consider two shocks that cause investors to assign a higher likelihood of restatement and examine how managers respond using voluntary disclosures. Managers inform stakeholders of the firm through mandatory disclosures (e.g. financial statements) and voluntary disclosures (e.g. earnings forecasts, conference calls, press releases). Financial reporting quality represents the extent to which financial statements faithfully reflect the underlying economics of the firm, and therefore, how much stakeholders can learn from these mandatory disclosures alone. The focus of this thesis is on how managers use voluntary channels to inform stakeholders following shocks to investors' expectations of financial reporting quality.
The increasingly crucial role of companies’ non-financial disclosure (NFD) and integrated reporting (IR) has led to a lively debate among academics, practitioners, and regulators on the approaches, framework, contents, principles, and standards that should oversee these forms of reporting. Through several expert contributions, conducted both with qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this book provides an up-to-date portrait of the debate by exploring corporate NFD either in its mandated contents or voluntary information. Contributing authors provide studies that encompass the different lines of NFD, namely non-financial risk reporting, sustainability reporting, and intellectual capital reporting, as well as the integration of financial and non-financial information through IR, the assurance of the NFD and IR through auditing activities, and the role of management and CFOs in NFD and IR.
This book focuses on the impact of the disclosure of non-financial risk, which could be seen as the most relevant non-financial information (NFI), in the aftermath of the 2014/95/EU Directive. The author analyses whether the switch from voluntary to mandatory NFI enhance the quality of disclosed NF risk-related information and the usefulness of the risk disclosure for investors. The book focuses specifically on the mandatory disclosure of non-financial (NF) risks as required by the EU Directive for listed Italian companies, investigating both the state of art of its disclosure and its usefulness for investors. In doing so, the book contributes to fill two relevant gaps in risk literature. The first research gap is related to the insufficient investigation of the disclosure of NF risks. Companies mandated to disclose risk-related information focused mainly on financial risks, in spite of the width of the definition of risk, conceived as information about any opportunity, danger, threat, or exposure that has or could impact the company in the future. The second gap is that empirical evidence about the effects of corporate risk disclosures is still limited, and the potential benefits of the disclosure of information on risks have not been fully explored. In particular, the relationship between risk disclosures and firm value is under researched, as the risk literature mainly focuses on the incentives question, related to the motives for which companies decide to disclose. The research in this book focuses on Italy, a country that provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of mandatory NF risk disclosure on firm market value, being one of the biggest industrial European countries that had not mandatory legislation for NFI disclosure, and also one of the leading countries in voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting at an international level. It has been carried out in the fiscal year 2017, the first year of the application of the mandatory NF disclosure for obliged Italian listed PIEs. The book contributes both to the measurement literature, as it presents a self-constructed quality NF risks and to the value relevance analysis literature, providing evidence of the usefulness of financial and non-financial risk-related disclosures in the Italian context.
The aim of the EU Directive 2014/95/EU, requiring the mandatory disclosure of non-financial information (NFI) by large undertakings and groups, is to rebuild trust with stakeholders. This book aims to summarize the relevant literature about company information with particular reference to the voluntary vis a vis mandatory NFI.
For researchers and managers interested in performance measurement, this volume includes innovative research that sheds light on topics such as the determinants of disclosure quality, the identification of appropriate metrics, the relationship among the different disclosure mechanisms and between voluntary and mandatory disclosure, and many more.
This book provides a critical analysis of the evolution of corporate disclosure. Building upon prior academic literature, it assesses the most important changes in mandatory corporate disclosure, the growing relevance of social and environmental disclosure, and revolutionary new forms of corporate communication, in particular social media. It also includes empirical analyses that shed further light on the impact of voluntary communication, i.e. social and environmental reporting and corporate social media communication, on managerial and investment decisions. Lastly, it discusses new directions for accounting and corporate governance research on the theoretical and empirical challenges of corporate disclosure. Offering a wealth of relevant and timely advice, the book will help regulators design policies that allow businesses to overcome current and emerging economic, social, and technological challenges.
This article examines the demand for disclosure rules by informed managers interested in increasing the market price of their firms. Within a model of political influence, a majority of managers chooses disclosure rules with which all firms must comply. In equilibrium, disclosure rules are asymmetric with greater levels of disclosure over adverse events. This asymmetry is positively associated with the informativeness of the measurement and increasing in the level of verifiability and ex-ante uncertainty of the information. The theory also offers implications about the relationship between mandatory and voluntary disclosure, when both channels are endogenous.
