This study examines the value of voluntary and mandatory disclosure in a market that applies International Accounting Standards (IAS) with limited penalties for noncompliance. The lack of enforcement creates an element of choice in the level of mandatory disclosure by companies. Using panel data analysis, our empirical results show that, after controlling for factors such as asset size and profitability, mandatory disclosure has a highly significant but negative relationship with firm value. This result, although puzzling from a traditional perspective, is consistent with the predictions of analytical accounting models, which emphasise the complex interplay of factors determining disclosure effects. Our results also show that voluntary disclosure has a positive but insignificant association with firm value. This lack of statistical significance supports the view that there is a complex interplay of different factors determining the relationship between disclosure and firm value.

This paper uses panel data to investigate the extent and determinants of disclosure levels of non-financial companies quoted on the Egyptian Stock Exchange.Results show gradual increases in disclosure levels, with a high compliance for mandatory disclosure, although the voluntary disclosure level was rather limited.Public sector companies appear generally to disclose less information than private sector companies in terms of the layout of the balance sheet, cash flow statement, notes to accounts, policies adopted in preparing the financial statements, and general information. Furthermore, more profitable companies disclose more information than less profitable ones. Results for firm size, gearing and stock activity are mixed.

This article contributes to the literature on the relationship between financial development and economic growth in three ways: it utilizes recently developed techniques for generalized methods of moments (GMM) one-step estimation with dynamic panel models, it focuses exclusively on a sample of developing countries and it uses as proxies for financial development variables which capture both banking sector and stock market effects. The results provide evidence, based on a panel of annual data for 30 developing countries, that while the stock market variables are positively and significantly related to growth, their presence results in the standard banking sector variables, credit to the private sector and liquid liabilities, having negative effects on growth.

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