It's a Small World After All: The Convergence of Disclosure Practices Across Legal Regimes over Time

The literature on disclosure practices has posited a relationship between legal regime and the amount of voluntary disclosure. Specifically, companies in nations with a civil law tradition were expected to make more voluntary disclosure to compensate for the information that would otherwise be required in common law nations. This expectation was predicted on the assumptions that investors in the former nation would have salient information needs such that the proprietary costs of information production would be overcome. Data collected from 75 firms across the world were used to support the finding that the extent of difference across legal regimes is diminishing over time.