Title: The effect of firm and country characteristics on mandatory disclosure compliance

Authors: Sónia Maria Ribeiro Lucas; Isabel Costa Lourenço

Addresses: ISCTE - IUL Business School, Lisbon University Institute, Avenida das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal ' ISCTE - IUL Business School, Lisbon University Institute, Avenida das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal

Abstract: Our study investigates the role of firm and country characteristics in determining the level of compliance with mandatory disclosure requirements. We also examine whether the role of firm characteristics hold across different environments. Our empirical study relies on European Union listed firms and their level of compliance with IFRS 3 disclosure requirements. Our results demonstrate that both firm and country characteristics develop a significant task in explaining the level of compliance. They confirm that firms located in a common-law country have the strongest, and firms located in a French-civil-law country the weakest, level of compliance with IFRS 3 disclosure requirements, with firms located in a Scandinavian- and German-civil-law country placed in the middle. Our findings also suggest that return on assets is the main determinant of the level of compliance in the common-law plus Scandinavian- and German-civil-law countries, while leverage is the main determinant in the French-civil-law countries.

Keywords: mandatory disclosure; IFRS; business combinations; firm characteristics; country characteristics; legal systems; financial accounting; International Financial Reporting Standards.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMFA.2014.064516

International Journal of Managerial and Financial Accounting, 2014 Vol.6 No.2, pp.87 - 116

Published online: 23 Oct 2014 *

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