The Association between Extensions in XBRL Disclosures and Financial Information Environment

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 73-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiyou Li ◽  
Emeka T. Nwaeze

ABSTRACT This study examines the association between XBRL extensions and financial information environments of firms, where “financial information environment” refers to the degree to which a firm's financial information is reflected in the information held/used by investors. An XBRL extension is a customized definition of a financial concept or reporting situation that is not available in the U.S. GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy. In 2009, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed firms to begin to use extensions to add new concepts in their financial disclosures. Critics express concerns that the reporting discretion permitted under the XBRL mandate will reduce comparability of financial disclosures and complicate financial analysis. Proponents contend that XBRL extensions will provide users with new and relevant information. To evaluate the competing views, we employ several proxies for financial information environment and perform analyses for early and later phases of XBRL adoption. We find that XBRL extensions are negatively (positively) associated with financial information environments of firms at the early (later) phases of XBRL adoption. The results for later periods of XBRL adoption provide support for the SEC's policy that allows registrants to use XBRL extensions to increase users' understanding of the information in financial statements.

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 631-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger S. Debreceny ◽  
Stephanie M. Farewell ◽  
Maciej Piechocki ◽  
Carsten Felden ◽  
Andre Gräning ◽  
...  

SYNOPSIS The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has adopted the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) in a multi-year program to enhance the functionality of the Commission's EDGAR database. Filers tag their financial statements with elements from a taxonomy that defines the reporting concepts so that the XBRL files can be understood by information consumers. The U.S. GAAP taxonomy was designed to represent common reporting practices and support the disclosure requirements of U.S. GAAP. If taxonomy elements for each disclosure concept are not present, the filer creates an extension element. Extensions, when used appropriately, provide decision-relevant information. When used inappropriately, particularly when a semantically equivalent element already exists in the foundation taxonomy, extensions add no information content. This research analyzes extensions made in a subset of XBRL filings made to the SEC between April 2009 and June 2010. Forty percent of these extensions were unnecessary, as semantically equivalent elements were already in the U.S. GAAP taxonomy. Extensions that aggregated or disaggregated existing elements comprised 21 percent of the extensions. New concepts accounted for 30 percent of the extensions, although many were variants of existing elements, rather than significantly new concepts.


2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Donald

Rational investment decisions require accurate information regarding the operations and performance of issuers. As the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has recently noted: “Accurate and reliable financial reporting lies at the heart of our disclosure-based system for securities regulation, and is critical to the integrity of the U.S. securities markets. Investors need accurate and reliable financial information to make informed investment decisions. Investor confidence in the reliability of corporate financial information is fundamental to the liquidity and vibrancy of our markets.” Issuers have strong motives to signal to investors that the business information they disclose is correct and complete – so as to build solid reputations and avoid discounts that investors might apply to their stock prices as compensation for undisclosed risk or misrepresented results. A similar argument applies to “gatekeeping” reputational intermediaries, such as auditing firms and investment banks that lend their reputations to their clients in various ways. However, dishonest issuers and gatekeepers can take advantage of a generally honest market (that does not contain a substantial fraud risk discount), and the return on fraud for a given member of a firm might exceed such individual's pro rata share of the firm's overall reputational capital, making crime literally pay; therefore, regulation must be introduced to supplement market controls and mandate full and accurate disclosure.


Author(s):  
Hana Bohušová ◽  
Patrik Svoboda

IFRS for SMEs were adopted in July 2009 as a result of efforts to harmonize financial reporting for SMEs. These standards are based on the same principles as full standards. The aim is, compared to full IFRS reporting of these businesses, to significantly simplify, mainly from the reason that the strict application of the principles of the full standards does not excessively financially and administratively burden smaller accounting entity. Field of identifying, recording and reporting of intangible assets except goodwill is an important field in which the methodology is substantially different. In the pre­sent paper there is documented on the example the impact of different methods for recording of internally generated intangible assets in the both systems into balance sheet and profit or loss and into the selected indicators of financial analysis. Definition of issues that may arise during the transition from the IFRS for SMEs to full IFRS and vice versa, in the context of drafting the opening balance sheet is another field to which the paper is dedicated.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Ahmadpour

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) has the potential to influence users’ processing of financial information and their judgments and decisions. XBRL is an eXtensible Markup Language (XML)-based language, developed specifically for financial reporting. XBRL, as a search-facilitating technology, contributes to direct searches and simultaneous presentation of related financial statement, and facilitates processing footnote information which could help financial statements’ users. XBRL is more than a distribution mechanism for data or facilitating technology. XBRL has the potential to significantly improve corporate governance. Putting that potential into practice requires an XBRL taxonomy model that is data based instead of document based. This paper hypothesizes that in the presence of search-facilitating technology, users’ judgments of financial statement reliability will be influenced by the choice of recognition versus disclosure of stock option compensation than in the absence of search-facilitating technology. When the stock option accounting varies between two firms, the search technology helps in both acquiring and integrating relevant information. The paper suggests the implementation of XBRL improves transparency of financial information and managers’ choices for reporting that information.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Parrino

Purpose This article examines rule amendments issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2020, as part of the SEC’s ongoing “disclosure effectiveness initiative”, that revise in significant respects the requirements for financial disclosures presented in SEC filings as Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. Design/methodology/approach This article provides an in-depth analysis of the rule amendments in the context of contrasting perspectives expressed by the SEC, individual SEC Commissioners who dissented from adoption of the amendments, and market participants regarding the merits of the SEC’s movement away from prescriptive disclosure requirements towards a more principles-based approach to disclosure. Findings Although the SEC’s rules have long reflected a mix of principles-based and prescriptive disclosure elements, the principles-based emphasis in this latest stage of the SEC’s disclosure modernization project accords the managements of filing companies greater latitude to determine whether financial information is material to investors and how such information should be presented. Originality/value This article provides expert guidance on a major new SEC disclosure development from an experienced securities lawyer.


2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Du ◽  
Miklos A. Vasarhelyi ◽  
Xiaochuan Zheng

ABSTRACT Since the mandate by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to begin interactive data reporting in June 2009, according to XBRL Cloud, an XBRL product and service provider, more than 4,000 filing errors have been identified. We examine the overall changing pattern of the errors to understand whether the large number of errors may hamper the transition to interactive data reporting. Using a sample of 4,532 filings that contain 4,260 errors, we document a significant learning curve exhibited by the XBRL filers. Specifically, we find that the number of errors per filing is significantly decreasing when a company files more times, suggesting that the company filers or the filing agents many companies use learn from their experiences and therefore the future filings are improved. Our findings provide evidence to encourage the regulatory body, the filers, and the XBRL technology supporting community to embrace the new disclosure requirement in financial reporting. The significantly decreased error pattern also helps address the information users' concerns regarding the data quality of XBRL filings. Data Availability: Data are publicly available from the sources identified in the study.


Author(s):  
Warsidi . ◽  
Wahyu Rizkiyaningsih ◽  
Oman Rusmana ◽  
Sukirman .

Local Governments are expected to provide relevant information related to their finance and performance to the public through the media that is easily accessible in order to meet the principles of accountability and transparency. The financial information through internet is called IFR (Internet Financial Reporting) which is a combination between the internet multimedia capability and capacity to communicate the financial information interactively. The objective of this study is to empirically examine determinants of internet financial reporting by local government in Indonesia. This study uses five variables there are Political Competition, Size, Dependency, Wealth and Type of Local Government. The sample in this study selected with purposive sampling. Total sample in this study are 130 local governments which contain 97 regency (74,6%) and 33 municipal (25,4%). Analysis method used in this study is multiple liner regression. The result shows that political competition, size and wealth of local government have a positive influence to the internet financial reporting in Indonesia. Two other variables, dependency and type of local government do not significantly affect to the internet financial reporting in Indonesian local goverments.


Author(s):  
María Trinidad Alvarez-Medina

The statement of cash flows, based on the financial information standard (NIF) B-2, issued by the Mexican Council of Financial Information Standards (CINIF, whose objective is to present to users, the generation and application of cash for activities of operation, investment and financing The analysis of cash flows, the application of methods and techniques of analysis to the basic financial statements as a whole, provide relevant information about operational and financial strengths and weaknesses of an economic entity. In the case presented by a Mexican multinational company, the financial statements as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016 are analyzed, using vertical and horizontal techniques, determining the generation and use of cash flows, financial ratios, percentages and trends. the statement of cash flows in conjunction with the statement of financial position, statement of comprehensive income and the statement of variations in stockholders' equity, they provide relevant information about the financial situation of an economic entity; and thus identify the reasons that explain the aspects of liquidity, leverage, profitability, activity and coverage, having more elements of judgment that allow it to support decision making.


Author(s):  
Shuo Yang

This paper examines comment letters on firms’ annual reports in an emerging market. The literature primarily focuses on comment letters issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), although many other market regulators also use SEC-style comment letters. Comment letters can potentially be very impactful in emerging markets due to weak institutions and low disclosure quality in these markets. Using comment letters in China from 2015 to 2019, I find that the market response to the receipt of comment letters is significantly negative and associated with the severity of the comment letters. The receipt (severity) of comment letters is associated with adverse regulatory consequences, CEO turnover, corrective actions to remedy financial reporting, and poor future financial performance in the propensity score matched sample (recipient sample). Overall disclosure quality in the post-review year does not increase, but some comment letter topics prompt topic-specific financial reporting changes.


2018 ◽  
pp. 133-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Girella ◽  
Mario Abela ◽  
Elisa Rita Ferrari

In 1998 Miller, in his paper titled "The margins of accounting" observed that "By looking at the margins of accounting, we can understand how this influential body of expertise is formed and transformed" (Miller, 1998: 618). Drawing on this analogy, the boundaries of reporting and the ways these are defined and re-defined, as a consequence of the relationships organisations form with other entities from time to time, and their substantive nature provide insights about the business and its business model. Accordingly, an examination of reporting boundaries helps to better understand and appreciate the objective of an organisation, the logic that underlies its business model and how that is ‘reflected' and communicated through the reporting entity's financial statements - which may or may not align with the boundaries of the ‘organisation'. Despite the relevance of reporting boundaries as a critical aspect of the accounting discipline, it remains a relatively unexplored area in the literature. Accordingly, the aim of this work is to offer an initial overview on how the boundaries of reporting have (not) changed in response to the broadening scope of reporting to address both financial and ‘non-financial' information (e.g. sustainability, governance and intangibles) and attempts to promote greater integration between both sets of information (IIRC, 2013). In particular, the analysis draws on the interpretative schemes of Zambon (1996) and Zambon and Zan (2000) and is combined with the concept of ‘transplantation'. The manner in which reporting boundaries are defined for both financial and non-financial reporting is investigated and compared. This comparison enables similarities and differences between the definition of the ‘reporting boundary' to be problematised and explored for both financial and non-financial reporting.


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