EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Strategic Subsidiary Disclosure

Scott D. Dyreng, Jeffrey Hoopes, Patrick Langetieg and Jaron H. Wilde

Journal of Accounting Research, 2020, vol. 58, issue 3, 643-692

Abstract: Although subsidiary disclosures in firms’ filings with the Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC; Exhibit 21) represent the most granular required public disclosure of a firm's geographic footprint, little is understood about the quality of the disclosure, and anecdotal evidence suggests firms may not fully comply with the disclosure requirements. We use data provided by multinational firms to the Internal Revenue Service regarding their foreign subsidiary locations to explore the accuracy of public subsidiary disclosures on Exhibit 21 of Form 10‐K per SEC rules. The overall incidence of nondisclosure is low, suggesting that most firms comply with Exhibit 21 disclosure rules, and that for most applications, Exhibit 21 disclosures provide a reasonable proxy for locations of significant subsidiaries. Nevertheless, there is some evidence of nondisclosure, particularly when subsidiaries are in tax havens, when the firm is more highly scrutinized in the media, or when the firm has other characteristics consistent with low‐quality disclosures such as SEC comment letters.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679X.12308

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:bla:joares:v:58:y:2020:i:3:p:643-692

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-8456

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Accounting Research is currently edited by Philip G. Berger, Luzi Hail, Christian Leuz, Haresh Sapra, Douglas J. Skinner, Rodrigo Verdi and Regina Wittenberg Moerman

More articles in Journal of Accounting Research from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:58:y:2020:i:3:p:643-692