Impact of culture, market forces and legal system on financial disclosures

Abstract: This study examines the impact of legal systems (LSs) on financial disclosures by firms from different countries. The results indicate that firms from common law countries are associated with higher financial disclosures compared to firms from code law countries. The findings also reveal that cultural values have an insignificant impact on financial disclosures by firms from common law countries, and the results on firms from code law countries provide mixed signals. The results for multinationals are similar to the results for the total sample. The cultural values have no impact on financial disclosures of multinationals from common law countries, and there are mixed signals for multinationals from code law countries. Influence of cultural environment on accounting standards and practices has been examine