Competitive harm and business segment reporting under ifrs 8: evidence from european union listed firms

Pardal, Pedro; Morais, Ana Isabel; Curto, José Dias

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.26/8880

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Authors

Pardal, Pedro

Morais, Ana Isabel

Curto, José Dias

Abstract(s)

Under IFRS 8, firms’ should provide financial segment disclosures that enable investors to assess the different sources of risk and income as management does. This sensitive information would also be available for competitors. The potential competitive harm may incentive firms to withhold segment information. However, the IASB believe that segment disclosure would improve. We aim to study the influence of competitive harm on the level of segment disclosures under IFRS 8 using a large sample of firms from EU. Empirical tests to our competitive harm model estimate the effect of three competitive harm proxies: abnormal profitability, industry concentration and labor power. The results showed a significant increase on the number of reportable business segments, but less significant for the number of key items. Estimation of the model, in pre and post period of IFRS 8 adoption, revealed that firms over performing their industry, operating in more concentrated industries and subject to higher labor power are still related to lower levels of segment disclosure on both periods. Furthermore, the results of the “change model2 showed that firms previously associated to abnormal profitability and labor power are statistically more related to the “no change” category than to the category representing firms that increased their disclosure. Overall the results seem to suggest that IFRS 8 had a low or a null effect in reducing non-disclosure due to proprietary costs motivations.