Voluntary financial disclosure, introduction of IFRS and the setting of a communication policy : An empirical test on SBF French firms using a publication score

A publication score of voluntary disclosed information disclosed by French firms was built on the 2003-2007 period. This original set of data is used to analyze the impact of the introduction of IFRS standards scheduled in 2005. It is also used to identify the determinants of communication policies set by listed firms. The publication score, for some firms and not all of them, outlines that useful qualitative information is brought to the market. Particularly, we show that highly communicant firms will reduce the information asymmetry as measured by the dispersion of analysts’ forecasts of earning.