The Content of Voluntary Intangible Asset Disclosures: Evidence from Emerging Market Companies

This paper examines the content of voluntary disclosures of intangible asset (IA) information communicated by the world's leading 200 emerging-market companies. We make a detailed assessment of the variety, nature, and extent of IA disclosures in annual reports using an index based on the Value Chain Scoreboard (TM) devised by Lev (2001). Our findings show that the vast majority of companies engage in IA voluntary disclosure practices. As expected, most companies disclose IA information stemming from the Discovery and Learning phase of the value chain, while significantly fewer companies disclose IA information from the Implementation phase. Contrary to popular belief, we find that the majority of companies disclose quantitative IA information, with both financial and nonfinancial components, rather than qualitative. Our results further indicate that the variety, nature, and extent of IA voluntary disclosures differ according to type of accounting standard adopted and industry, but not size or foreign listing.