Accounting narratives and disclosure quality: Empirical evidence from the UK, France and Germany

In this paper, we analyse narrative disclosures from over 28,000 corporate announcements for 137 UK, French and German companies over the years 2003 to 2011. A custom-dictionary, based on software used by Kothari et al (2009) is employed to classify the disclosures into six categories based on theme and content, and the volume of disclosures in each category, in each month is recorded for each firm. The resulting variables are then used in models of disclosure quality based on the accuracy and dispersion of analysts’ earnings forecasts, to draw conclusions about the extent to which the quantity of disclosed information is related to disclosure quality. We also investigate the effects of the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by the firms during this period, differences between countries and the effect of various company specific factors including the level of intangible assets and goodwill in the firm’s balance sheet.