Discretionary Disclosure of Listed Non-Financial Firms in an Emerging Market: Evidence from Ghana

Abstract

The main objectives of this study are to measure the extent of voluntary disclosure of listed non‑financial firms in Ghana. The paper also seeks to identify the corporate governance attributes that influence voluntary disclosure, and finally, it rated the importance of voluntary items in the annual reports from the viewpoint of investors in Ghana. The paper makes use of 2013 to 2016 annual reports for 17 firms. The corporate governance attributes examined are board size, the proportion of independent non‑executive directors on the board, blockholder ownership and the audit committee. Five control variables were also used to support the study. We developed a total of 66 voluntary items. Both the simple frequency distribution and Stata software were employed to analyze the data. The findings revealed a mean of 32.7% as the level of voluntary disclosure. Board size, block holder ownership and audit committee had a positive association but only board size was statistically significant. The proportion of independent non‑executive directors had an insignificant negative relationship. Concerning the rating of the importance of the voluntary items, items under financial information were more of concern to investors. There are benefits that the findings provide which will be useful to investors, preparers of financial statements and regulators. The study reveals the corporate governance attribute(s) that influence corporate disclosure and points out the level of transparency if the level of disclosure is used as a proxy.