A cost benefit study of voluntary disclosure: some empirical evidence from French listed companies

The aim of this paper is to relate the extent of disclosure in the annual reports of French listed companies to some economic determinants. The sample includes the 1995 annual reports of 102 randomly selected industrial and commercial firms. The extent of disclosure is measured by an index based on financial and non-financial discretionary information. The model of hypothesis explaining voluntary disclosure is defined as the interplay of contradictory forces: inducements deriving principally from agency theory and limitations imposed by information costs. The results reveal that voluntary disclosure is significantly related to size, foreign activity and to a proxy for proprietary costs.