A debate opposes many accounting, finance, and economics researchers on investors’ need for disclosure regulation. Indeed, Healy and Palepu (2001) note that extent theory on voluntary disclosure shows that, absent market imperfections or externalities, firm managers have incentives to optimally trade off the costs and benefits of voluntary disclosure and to provide the efficient level of inform...

In attempting to understand voluntary corporate disclosure, many empirical studies have used leverage as an explanatory variable. One reason for an association between debt and disclosure relates to the agency costs of the shareholder-bondholder conflict. By voluntarily disclosing information, shareholders may be able to reduce this agency cost. We provide an additional reason why debt and disc...

Proactive security activities encompass voluntary disclosure concerning information security that firms are taking to improve the security of their information and information systems. Examples of voluntary disclosures falling into this category include discussions about a firm’s use of encryption, secure socket layers data transmission, implementation of network security measures, or disclosur...

Purpose: This paper empirically investigates the factors that impact voluntary information disclosure level of Turkish manufacturing companies listed in the Borsa Istanbul (BIST). Design/methodology/approach: The data collection methodology of the study is content analysis of annual reports of the corporations listed on the BIST for the year 2010. In order to analyze the results, we employed Or...

In a society depending on real time information, corporate disclosure is crucial for the capital market efficiency. The more disclosures a company makes, the more transparent becomes the information to investors, the lower becomes the information asymmetry and more credible the firms will be for the market. The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between the voluntary disclo...

Single-segment (focused) firms have a natural disadvantage compared to multi-segment (diversified) with respect to voluntary disclosure policy. Since aggregate disclosures by focused firms are at a finer level of detail than those of diversified firms, the latter have greater ability to react to focused firm information and therefore have a competitive advantage. I provide evidence that focused...

We study how institutional blockholdings affect firm voluntary disclosure. document that concentrated ownership reduces firms’ disclosure measured by the propensity to issue management forecasts, comprehensiveness of guidance, engage in conference calls, and number 8-K filings. identify two channels through which blockholders First, have easier access managers substitute private for public info...

Whether the disclosure of genetic (and non-genetic) information should be mandatory or voluntary is of concern. At present there are two opposing camps--the insurance industry argues for mandatory disclosure to avoid problems of adverse selection, and genetic interest groups argue for voluntary disclosure, fearing discrimination and public reluctance to have tests, thus missing out on any benef...