Discontinued SEC required disclosures: The value of repairs and maintenance expenses

Bruce K. Behn, Richard Riley, Giorgio Gotti and Richard C. Brooks

Research in Accounting Regulation, 2011, vol. 23, issue 2, 184-187

Abstract: On December 13, 1994, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) eliminated certain schedules including repairs and maintenance (R&M) disclosures previously required in annual reports and registration statements. This SEC decision provides us a research setting where disclosure has been decreased. The purpose of this study is to determine if market participants used R&M information prior to its elimination. The findings indicate that R&M disclosures did provide value-relevant information. Further, the year following the elimination of mandatory R&M disclosures, only 4% of the firms in the sample voluntarily disclosed R&M information. Hence, it appears that decreased disclosures deprived the market participants, not only in principle but also in practice, of value-relevant R&M expenses information. The results also suggest that if R&M disclosures are not required firms will not voluntarily provide the information.

Keywords: Repairs and maintenance expenses; SEC; Mandatory disclosures; Value relevance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1052045711000403
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reacre:v:23:y:2011:i:2:p:184-187

DOI: 10.1016/j.racreg.2011.06.011

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Accounting Regulation is currently edited by G. Previts

More articles in Research in Accounting Regulation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().