توضیح شاخص افشاگری حسابداری بازارهای بورس توسط فعالیت بازار ارز خارجی

In this article, researcher-created accounting disclosure index of 23 stock exchanges for the year 1992 and its relationship with variables including foreign exchange turnover, economic and financial indicators were investigated. The accounting disclosure index of global stock exchanges crafted by Adhikari and Tondkar (1992) was regressed on foreign market turnover which was utilized as a proxy for foreign exchange market activity. The OLS results supported that along with the activity of foreign exchange market; GNI per capita, market capitalization, energy and electric consumption, number of listed companies were significantly related with the accounting disclosure index. The foreign market turnover was found to be positively influencing the accounting disclosure index. The models explained about 73% of the variation in the index with an F-ratio of 26.56 indicating the overall significance of the model.

Different social, political, regulatory environments create different accounting disclosure requirements for firms across the world. It is clear to expect variation in the requirements of information disclosure of public firms traded in a stock exchange market in Switzerland (SIX Swiss Exchange) compared to firms traded in the stock exchange market of Turkey (Istanbul Stock Exchange). Requirements for information disclosure in part reflect the transparency and accountability of the public firms. Accounting standard setters are continuously maintaining the accuracy and transparency of the disclosures by monitoring and providing additional guidelines and issuance of new requirements. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has issued recently new disclosure requirements pertaining to application of fair value measurement provisions of US GAAP (Pounder, 2010). Therefore the decision making mechanism might be twisted accordingly to new disclosure requirements. An earlier study found that by surveying the institutional investors, corporate issuers and market regulators, capital market decisions are affected by such diversity in the international markets (Choi & Levich, 1991). Ahmed and Courtis (1999) investigated the literature on the association between the accounting disclosure levels and corporate characteristics. Among various factors, their meta-analysis results supported that the corporate size, listing status and leverage were positively and significantly influencing the disclosure levels. The correlation coefficients of these variables with the disclosure level are 0.3, 0.3, and 0.2 respectively. On the other hand, the accounting disclosure levels—higher or lower—were determined regardless of the profitability of the corporation, and the size of the audit firm. Earlier studies examined the accounting disclosure comprehensiveness and levels along with the corporate characteristics in different countries including Hong Kong (Wallace & Naser, 1995), United Kingdom (Wallace, Choudhury, & Adhikari, 1999). The former study suggested that there is relationship between the mandatory information enclosed in the annual reports of corporations with the researcher-created indices of the comprehensiveness of accounting disclosure. Significant covariations with several indicators of firm, i.e. scope of the business and asset size were found. These variables are evidenced to be positively associated with the comprehensiveness index. Similarly, the latter study empirically proved that firm size was positively, return on sales was negatively related to the comprehensiveness of cash flow reporting. Accounting disclosure index for the year 1992, which was used in the present study, was created by Adhikari and Tondkar (1992). The authors focused on its relationship with macro-level factors. These factors include degree of economic development, type of economy, size of the equity market (market capitalization), activity on the equity market (market turnover), and dispersion of stock ownership in the equity market. Findings suggested that among these factors, only market capitalization was significantly explaining the index. This index has scores for 35 exchange markets (Stock exchange—SE) all over the world including Austria (Vienna SE), Finland (Helsinki SE), Korea (Seoul SE), Portugal (Lisbon SE), Turkey (Istanbul SE) along others (Table 1). The authors have picked only one stock exchange from each country. The index was crafted by the authors as the following: A survey that included 44 items asking about listing and filing information requirements of stock exchanges was designed. The design was completed after a thorough review of the literature on information disclosure requirements and review of the listing and filing requirements of the NYSE, London SE, Tokyo SE that are considered to be the most precise accounting disclosure and reporting practices. Survey was sent to 287 experts in international equity market in 41 countries (7 experts in each country). Fifty‐two percent response rate was recorded. By giving weight to some information items more importance relative to the literature, the authors created both weighted and unweighted indices. The accounting disclosure has been examined in many ways in earlier studies; however, the niche point in this particular study is that we are analyzing the association between the accounting disclosure index of selected 23 global stock exchanges and foreign exchange market activities in these countries. Thus, we utilized the aforementioned researcher-created index as our dependent variable. The rationale behind including the foreign exchange market turnover as a variable in our analysis is the following: Stock exchanges include firms operating in international environment in which exchange risk is of high importance. If a stock market is exposed to international exchange risk, then stock exchange receives more pressure to disclose information in detail and in more transparency. Hence, as the internationalization of a stock exchange builds up, the more qualified accounting disclosure requirements of stock exchanges are observed leading to better accounting disclosure scores.

In this study, our primary goal was to explore the association between the foreign exchange market activity and the accounting disclosure requirement scores of stock exchanges. The accounting disclosure scores that were constructed by an earlier study were utilized as the disclosure index. It included 35 stock exchanges across the world however the availability of data of the foreign exchange turnover reduced it to 23 stock exchanges. Several explanatory variables from the World Development Indicators were operationalized to control for the development of the stock market including the extent of MNEs involvement and economic development level of the country. Statistical results supported our hypothesis that higher foreign exchange market activity which was proxied by foreign exchange turnover, improved the disclosure index. Therefore, better accounting practices and oversight are associated with higher activity in the foreign exchange market. On the other hand, the number of listed domestic companies scaled by the population had a negative relationship with the disclosure index. In our opinion, this may be due to the fact that lower number of domestic listed companies indicates relatively more MNEs are listed in a stock exchange. MNEs increase the exposure of the stock exchange to international operations therefore, for the sake of obtaining the financial security of the firms MNEs are providing more transparent information. Therefore, disclosure requirements of stock markets are adjusted accordingly and thereby improved. Similarly, the MNEs capital requirements are financed through international investors and creditors that are looking for more detailed and improved accounting information disclosure. Future studies can extend the data set and further the findings as well as include various environmental factors to explore their associations with the accounting disclosure scores. Besides, broadening the angles looking into foreign exchange market activity might be furthered by considering the futures market and taking security market activities into account so that the accounting disclosure ratings of stock exchanges could be investigated from a different perspective.