Purpose:The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) has been heralded as a tool for improving the quality of characteristics associated with business reporting, which include relevance, credibility, reliability, comparability, consistency, materiality, and understandability, providing significant benefits to all parties involved in the reporting supply chain. Specifically, this study empirically investigates whether XBRLbased financial reports improve the quality of reported earnings, thereby enhancing the credibility of financial reports.Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of XBRL-based financial reports for companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange between 2019 and 2021, the study examined whether XBRL adoption improves the quality of reported earnings.
Findings:The results show that the mandatory adoption of XBRL in the Saudi Stock Exchange did not reduce the earnings management, nor did it improve the quality of reported earnings in the financial reports between 2019 and 2021. In addition, the managers engaged in real activities-based earnings management measured by abnormal cash flows, as well as accrual-based earnings management in the post-XBRL phase.
Purpose: Previous studies indicate that compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is not complete in many countries. This study empirically investigates, under the Egyptian version of IFRS, the extent to which listed companies in Egypt comply with disclosure requirements in accordance with Egyptian Accounting Standard No. 44, and provides evidence of factors associated with the level of compliance. The factors examined are sector type, the quality of the audit firm, and foreign activities.Design/methodology/approach: A disclosure index, which includes 29 items representing disclosure requirements under EAS 44, has been developed to examine the annual reports for the year 2020 for a sample of 99 companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange.Findings: The results indicate that the overall level of companies' compliance is 62.5% of the disclosures required by EAS 44. This low level of compliance raises questions about the audit quality in Egypt, and add concerns about the lack of effective oversight in the Egyptian Stock Exchange. It also requires investigating the factors that explain this low level of compliance. Simple and multiple regressions were used to analyze the data and test hypotheses. The study found a significant positive relationship between each of foreign activities, the quality of the audit firm, and the compliance level with EAS 44. Moreover, the study found a significant negative relationship of the sector type and the compliance level.Research limitations: This study has some limitations: The disclosure index includes only mandatory items; The composition of the items in the disclosure index does not reflect their importance as perceived by users of financial information; The data used to test the company's compliance level and characteristics were collected manually from annual reports.Originality/value: The results contribute to the literature on compliance, and provide important insights for a post-implementation review by investigating the extent of disclosure by listed companies in Egypt.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.