The effect of accruals quality on the association between voluntary disclosure and information asymmetry in Korea

Abstract

Using data on the firms' voluntary disclosures from the Korea Stock Exchange from 2011 to 2014, we first empirically examine the association between voluntary disclosure and information asymmetry and then investigate the extent to which this association is affected by accruals quality since Korea adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2011. We use Comprix et al. (2011) and Shin and Park (2014)'s measures of information asymmetry. They are daily stock return volatility (VOLA) and trading volume turnover (VOL). We use the Dechow et al.'s (1995) revised Jones model and the Kothari et al.'s (2005) performance matched discretionary accrual model to measure the discretionary accruals. The absolute values of discretionay accruals are used as proxies for accruals quality. Final research samples with voluntary disclosure for this study are 1,226 (firms-years) companies. The research findings generally support our hypotheses. First, the relation between voluntary disclosure and information asymmetry is statistically and significantly positive as we have expected. The Korean companies with high voluntary disclosure would experience higher daily stock return volatility and less trading volume, which implies that companies tend to disclose biased information to the outside, which is consistent with prior studies in Korea. Second, the accruals quality (moderating variable) on the relation between voluntary disclosure and information asymmetry is statistically and significantly negative. Thus, we can conclude that when accruals quality is high, more voluntary disclosure decreases information asymmetry. These findings imply that accruals quality works as a mechanism in reducing the negative effect of voluntary disclosure on information asymmetry after the adoption of IFRS in Korea. The limitation of this study is such that we might not have considered other omitted variables and other proxies for the accruals quality, voluntary disclosure, and information asymmetry.