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 study examines the associations and causations between corporate economic performance, environmental disclosure and greenhouse gas emissions, utilizing a large, longitudinal, multicountry dataset disaggregated between developed and developing countries. The methodology uses a simultaneous equation model with system estimation to deal with endogeneity between the variables, and Granger causality tests to indicate their direction of causation. A robust result is that lower emissions are strongly associated with better economic performance. After pretesting for stationarity, we find evidence of a one‐way causation from emissions and environmental disclosure to economic performance, but no evidence of reverse causation. We also find strong evidence of a one‐way causation from emissions to disclosure, but no evidence of reverse causation. The overarching policy implication is that environmental performance, as measured by greenhouse gas emissions, plays a crucial role in the formulation of business strategy at the firm level and government environmental policy at national and international levels.

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 is the first study to provide an extensive and critical review of different techniques used in the empirical accounting literature to measure disclosure. The purpose is to help future researchers to identify exemplars and to select suitable techniques or to develop their own techniques. It also provides in depth discussion of current measurement issues related to disclosure and identifies gaps in the current literature which future research may aim to cover.

This paper develops a framework for corporate financial disclosure measurement to identify and evaluate common measures of financial disclosure employed in prior empirical accounting studies. It identifies two approaches: (i) a disclosure-based approach that investigates actual disclosure, operationalizes the concept of disclosure in terms of its main dimensions such as the quantity and quality of disclosure, and develops methods to measure them such as the disclosure index and textual analysis, and (ii) a non-disclosure-based approach that uses the values of some observable variables to proxy for disclosure such as market-based disclosure measures. The study also discusses some empirical challenges related to causal claims and the extent to which the reliability and validity of these different measures of disclosure are tested. The purposes of this review are (i) to help future researchers identify exemplars and select or develop their own suitable disclosure measures, and (ii) to identify measurement issues relating to corporate financial disclosure and provide avenues for future research.