Cantidad y calidad de información de riesgos divulgada por las empresas españolas: Un análisis en periodos diferentes del ciclo económico

Abstract

Companies must disclose information on the risks they are exposed to. This duty has brought about a new research line on risk information disclosure. Within this line, this paper analyses the quantity and quality of risk information disclosed by firms in two different periods: One characterized by economic growth (year 2006); and another corresponding to a crisis time (year 2011). We focus our work in Spain, and we take the data from non-financial companies listed at the Spanish Stock Exchange in the years 2006 and 2011. With regard to the quantity of information disclosed by companies, our results show that the degree of risk information disclosure is higher for a crisis period than for a non-crisis time. However, when we check for differences in the quality of the risk information disclosed by firms, we do not detect statistically significant differences between both periods. Furthermore, we observe that the higher quantity of risk information disclosed in the crisis time corresponds to financial risks. We do not encounter differences in the information on non-financial risks disclosed by firms.