Voluntary Corporate Disclosure by Swedish Companies

Abstract 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.