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The primary objective of this paper is to study the relationship between voluntary earnings disclosures and a combined set of corporate governance attributes in France. We use binary logit models to check our hypotheses. The results indicate significant negative associations between voluntary earnings disclosures and ownership concentration, and between voluntary earnings disclosures and a unitary leadership structure. The results also show that French firms providing voluntary earnings disclosures are more likely to have higher foreign institutional investor's ownership, and to offer stock option plans for their executives. These findings shed the light on the corporate governance features that enhance incentives for voluntary earnings disclosures and those affecting these incentives under high ownership concentration.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of voluntary disclosure on information asymmetry between investors and the average information content of subsequent the earnings announcement.

The authors use empirical methodology relying on multiple regression analyses. The authors estimate models of trading volume and stock returns around the earnings’ release date as a function of voluntary disclosures, measured using information in the 8-K statements.

Voluntary disclosures prior to the earnings release date increase trading volume related to stock returns. In addition, voluntary disclosures also reduce stock price movement around that date.

The results indicate that voluntary disclosures increase trading volume related to stock returns around the earnings release date. Such increases indicate increased differential precision among investors, demonstrating that voluntary disclosures increase differences in opinion among investors. The reduced stock price movement around the earnings release date also show that voluntary disclosures reduce the information content of earnings. One limitation is that the measure of voluntary disclosures does not consider the variation in the information content of individual disclosures.

Firms who make voluntary disclosures will need to carefully consider how to structure such releases to minimize asymmetry between investors. Investors should pay greater attention to finding out, and interpreting, voluntary disclosures by firms.

Regulators have previously expressed concern about leveling the playing field between more and less informed investors. The results showing increased differences in information as a result of voluntary disclosures provide valuable insights as regulators debate the balance of mandated and voluntary disclosure.

This is the first study to investigate the effect of voluntary disclosures on information asymmetry among investors using trading volume and, consequently, the first to find increased differences among investors that result from those voluntary disclosures. The paper is also the first to use a direct measure of voluntary disclosure developed by Cooper et al. to demonstrate the negative relation between voluntary disclosure and the average informativeness of earnings announcements.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the current level of voluntary corporate disclosure in the Egyptian Stock Exchange. In addition, it explores the factors influencing the extensiveness of voluntary disclosure and examines the potential consequences of such disclosure in regards to the phenomenon of earnings management.

A relevant disclosure index to the Egyptian context was adopted to assess the level of voluntary disclosure in the 2010 annual reports of the most actively traded companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. The relationship between the extent of voluntary disclosure and each specific-related factor was examined using unranked and ranked OLS regression models. Meanwhile, a system of simultaneous equations was performed using a two-stage least squares regression model in order to investigate whether companies with higher levels of voluntary disclosure exhibit lower levels of earnings management practices.

The results indicate that the level of voluntary disclosure is positively responsive to specific corporate attributes, namely, the type of auditing firm and the two industries of Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals, and Chemicals. However, no significant indications were found that firm size, leverage, profitability and liquidity are important determinants of corporate disclosure. Also, the results show no evidence to support the prior anticipation that a higher level of voluntary disclosure reduces the ability of managers to make use of earnings management. On the contrary, it was found that leverage and the tendency of firms to avoid reporting declines in earnings are the main drivers of the phenomenon of earnings management in Egypt.

This paper has important implications for both domestic and overseas investors in Egypt as well as the regulatory authorities in the developing economies.

The main contribution of this paper is its focus on the extent of voluntary disclosure in a developing country such as Egypt, which has a high potential for economic growth in the near future. Besides, this paper is the first to examine the relationship between the level of voluntary disclosure and the phenomenon of earnings management in the Egyptian context.

This paper aimed to explore the effect of a regulatory change pertaining to earnings forecasts disclosure from a mandatory to a voluntary regime on the valuation of Malaysian initial public offerings (IPOs).

The study employed ordinary least square (OLS) regression and quantile regression to analyse the impact of disclosure of earnings forecasts regulation on the valuation of IPOs which comprised 458 IPOs reported for the period 2000–2017 on Bursa Malaysia.

This paper revealed that the regulatory change in forecasted earnings disclosure from a mandatory to a voluntary regime, effective from 1 February 2008, had a negative impact on the valuation of IPOs. The regime change did not improve the transparency of firms issuing IPOs. In fact, the absence of forecasted earnings information in most IPO prospectuses caused ex ante uncertainties to increase. Voluntary disclosure, however, had a significant positive relationship with the valuation of the IPOs issued during the global financial crisis period (2008–2010). Firms concealed their poor qualities by excluding forecasted earnings information from their prospectuses in order to have a fair valuation.

The findings may be used by policymakers as guidance in improving the existing regulation regarding the disclosure of forecasted earnings.

This paper provides new insight on the effect of a regulatory change pertaining to earnings forecasts disclosure from a mandatory to a voluntary regime on the valuation of Malaysian IPOs. It also provides evidence that the regulatory change of earnings forecast disclosure affects the IPOs' values listed during the global financial crisis period.

This paper aims to examine the impact of disclosure regulation on the levels of bias and accuracy in management earnings forecasts disclosed in the prospectuses of Malaysian initial public offering (IPO). Specifically, the authors investigated the two environments of regulation (mandatory versus voluntary) to draw some conclusions regarding the benefits of regulating disclosure of management earnings forecasts.

A sample of 111 Malaysian IPOs listing on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia from January 1, 2004 to February 29, 2012 was used. The paper uses both univariate and multivariate statistical analyses on this sample of IPOs.

The empirical results of these multivariate regressions indicated that disclosure regulation has positive and significant impact on the bias and accuracy of management earnings forecasts disclosed in IPO prospectus. In general, the study results suggest that using disclosure regulation to improve the quality of IPO earnings forecasts can be, to some extent, an effective strategy.

The findings of this study have important implications for regulators and investors. The findings can provide them some relevant insights on the improvements to the earnings forecasts accuracy and trends of the forecast (optimistic or pessimistic) after the change from mandatory to voluntary disclosure. Thus, the authorities may learn whether this change is an effective policy or whether the regime of mandatory disclosure was better for IPO companies and should be reversed.

This study is regarded as the first attempt to investigate the impact of reforms in disclosure regulation on the quality of management earnings forecasts of IPO prospectuses in a developing nation such as Malaysia. In spite of this, the paper focuses on a single country, and it contributes significant insights to the debate about the credibility of IPO management earnings forecasts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether non‐mandated earnings disclosures include value‐relevant information and affect information asymmetry and stock market liquidity.

The event study methodology explores the informational content of good, bad and neutral voluntary earnings disclosures. The OLS panel regression framework is, then, used to analyze information asymmetry and stock market liquidity subsequent to both categories of voluntary earnings disclosures (i.e. earnings forecasts and quarterly earnings disclosures).

Empirical tests show that voluntary earnings disclosures include material information and that bad news is released in an untimely fashion leading to information leakage in the pre‐announcement period. The results also indicate that quarterly earnings enhance stock market liquidity by shrinking bid‐ask spreads. However, earnings forecasts exacerbate information asymmetry before and after the announcement date. This result confirms the existence of information leakage and suggests that managers have considerable discretion whether to make a forecast, and in deciding its timing, form, and specificity.

This paper examines stock market liquidity around voluntary earnings disclosures using effective spreads. Future research should examine other proxies for market liquidity, i.e. market depth.

The results provide insights on the positive benefits of a disclosure policy. Companies have to provide investors with better and timely information in order to mitigate the information leakage risk and thus improve stock market liquidity.

This paper provides new evidence about information content, information asymmetry and stock market liquidity around voluntary earnings disclosures in France. Unlike financial statements disclosures, quarterly earnings and earnings forecasts are isolated events that can be evaluated by the market with less noise.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether financial analysts are sensitive to voluntary earning disclosures.

The paper is based on a literature review of the relationship between analysts' behaviour and corporate disclosures. It is assumed first that analyst coverage both influences and is influenced by voluntary earning disclosures, and that second, French managers are expected to make voluntary disclosures in order to reduce market uncertainty. To test these hypotheses, a simultaneous equation model and an ordinary least square regression framework were estimated on a sample of 154 French‐listed firms between 1998 and 2001.

The results show that voluntary earning disclosures positively influence analyst coverage decision. They also show that voluntary disclosures improve the accuracy of analyst forecasts and reduce market uncertainty.

The paper does not cover all forms of corporate voluntary disclosures.

The findings suggest that corporate disclosure policy is likely to change financial analysts' behaviour. The results are useful to both managers, wishing to meet market expectations and, to investors wishing to invest in richer informational environment firms.

This paper provides original results about the role of analysts in France as information intermediaries. These analysts pay little attention to French firms with a poor information environment in which minority shareholders are less inclined to ask for costly analyst coverage.

The study explores the relationship between information overloading and the complexity of reporting. In particular, it investigates whether voluntary information in a firm annual report is associated with its readability. Likewise, it examines how a firm's profitability and earnings management practices impact the nexus of voluntary disclosure and readability.

It uses the annual reports of the Egyptian nonfinancial firms listed in the EGX 100 index from 2010 to 2018. The readability of the annual report is measured automatically using the LIX index, and a predeveloped voluntary disclosure index is used to measure the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports.

The results reveal that the readability of annual reports is a negative function of voluntary disclosure, suggesting that Egyptian firms with more voluntary disclosure are likely to have more complex (i.e. less readable) annual reports. Likewise, less profitable firms and firms with earning management practices increase voluntary information in their annual reports, resulting in an adverse impact on their reporting readability.

It focuses only on the annual reports of Egyptian firms and considers a firm’s overall voluntary information rather than a particular area of voluntary disclosure. It introduces a code to measure the readability of Arabic-written texts, which can be applied to different areas of disclosure.

Policymakers in Egypt are encouraged to develop enforceable regulations to control voluntary disclosure in annual reports. Egyptian investors should view the practice of higher voluntary disclosure skeptically as its aim may be to divert attention from a firm's poor performance and earnings management practice.

The study is the first evidence from Egypt on the effect of information overloading, proxied by voluntary disclosure, on the readability of reporting. Likewise, it contributes to methodological development in measuring the readability of Arabic-written annual reports.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of Research and Development (R&D) disclosures on earnings management practices.

This study has been conducted by using a longitudinal archival data set of French companies belonging to the CAC All-Tradable index and instrumental variable estimations.

The results of the research highlight the moderating effect of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption and the financial crisis in this relationship. It also shows that R&D disclosures are negatively associated with earnings management. The findings also show that the IFRS adoption is complementary in its monitoring role of managerial behavior in reducing earnings management in the presence of R&D disclosures. Furthermore, this study finds that the negative effect of R&D disclosures on earnings management is more prevalent during the global financial crisis.

This study examined the consequences of the voluntary disclosure of R&D information in the French context. It introduces a measurement for the disclosure of R&D activities in annual reports through the construction of an R&D disclosure index.

This paper aims to examine the characteristics of firms that voluntary disclose generally accepted accounting principals (GAAP)-compliant statements of income, statement of cash flows (SCF) and balance sheet (BS) concurrently with quarterly earnings releases. Cardinal motivation of the paper stems from the increasing demand over the past decade by professional analysts and the Securities and Exchange Commission for concurrent disclosure of GAAP-compliant financial statements with earnings’ announcements.

Using hand-collected archival data, a random sample was identified as disclosing GAAP-compliant SCF and BS with their quarterly earnings releases compared to a control sample identified as non-GAAP-compliant disclosing firms during the 36-month period of 2009-2011, and several hypotheses are tested to determine managements’ incentives to disclose GAAP-compliant versus non-GAAP financials with their earnings releases.

The results in this paper suggest that debt financing, corporate governance, operating performance, earnings volatility, industry membership (such as technology and more research and development-intensive) and complexity of operations (number of segments) are significant characteristics of firms electing to concurrently disclose GAAP-compliant SCF and BS with earnings releases.

The findings discussed in this paper are of special interest to financial reporting policymakers, financial analysts, firm managers and stakeholders and academics.

The voluntary disclosure literature on quarterly earnings releases is extended by differentiating between GAAP-compliant and non-GAAP-compliant voluntary disclosers. The specific findings of this study may provide valuable input to policymakers as they study prevailing voluntary disclosure rules and practices.