Voluntary Corporate Disclosure by Swedish Companies

Sweden is of interest because of the rapid growth in the Stockholm Stock Exchange and because of the country's disproportionate number of multi-national enterprises. This paper reports on the extent of voluntary disclosure in the corporate annual reports of unlisted and listed Swedish companies. A wide-ranging definition of voluntary disclosure is adopted because of the flexibility of approach accepted in Sweden. This should not be construed that Swedish accounting is largely unregulated, rather it reflects a problem of interpretation of what constitutes generally accepted accounting principles in Sweden. In addition, the paper assesses whether there is a significant association between a number of independent variables and the extent of disclosure.