Measuring the voluntary disclosure of information in Romanian context

Citation

(2010), "Measuring the voluntary disclosure of information in Romanian context", International Journal of Accounting & Information Management, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijaim.2010.36618aad.004

Measuring the voluntary disclosure of information in Romanian context

Article Type: AMIS statement and abstracts From: International Journal of Accounting and Information Management, Volume 18, Issue 1

Abstract

Several recently wrote studies have confirmed that voluntary disclosure of financial and non-financial information can reduce information asymmetry between managers and shareholder's, can reduce also, the cost of capital and can satisfy the needs of modern stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of voluntary information disclosure and what information are voluntarily disclosed through annual reports by the sampled Romanian listed companies, and to analyze and measure the impact of several factors associated with voluntary disclosure. Using annual reports from 2005 to 2007 for the non-financial companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE), we test several hypotheses taken into account the sample companies. After the descriptive analysis, we performed a multiple regression analysis. The results indicated that profitability, auditor type, IAS/IFRS regulations, bank debt and private ownership structure positively affects the extent of voluntary disclosure choices of sampled Romanian listed companies. We found also, that the level of voluntary disclosure in the annual reports is still low. We can explain this low level of voluntary disclosure to the functioning and development of the BSE and to the fact that BSE is a relatively new stock exchange. The major findings of our study, concerning the voluntary disclosure level of Romanian listed companies and the measurement of the impact of the above-mentioned variables on voluntary disclosure, suggest that, despite the ambiguity and uncertainty about transparency and disclosure regulations and the lack of experience in external financial reporting and voluntary disclosure of information, Romanian companies generally respond well to this new challenge regarding disclosure.

Keywords Information, Voluntary disclosure, Annual reports, Listed companies

Acknowledgements

It is with greatest regret that we acknowledge the premature death of the first author of the paper, Cosmina Mădălina Pop.

Cosmina Mădălina Pop, Victoria Bogdan and Dorina Nicoleta Popa

University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania

Corresponding author

Victoria Bogdan can be contacted at: vicbogdan@yahoo.com