Voluntary Disclosure of the Schedule of Manufacturing Cost －Implications of Revisions to Korean Accounting Standards－

Korea Accounting Standard Board announced new amendment of changing in disclosure regulation in order to protect firm’s operating strategy. The new amendment includes the disclosure policy about the schedule of manufacturing cost. This study explores the characteristics of firms which still voluntarily disclose the schedule of manufacturing costs even though the mandatory regulations about reporting detail information have been relaxed. As the starting point when the regulation would be acted is uncertain, we consider different starting point of voluntary disclosure, and set several definition of voluntary disclosure. We find that there are statistically significant differences in characteristics of voluntary disclosure firms. The voluntary disclosure firms are younger, small size, lower performance than non－voluntary disclosure firms. The market which voluntary disclosure firms belong to is less competitive than the market which non－voluntary disclosure firms belong to. Also the ratio of sales cost in voluntary disclosure firms is higher than that of non－voluntary disclosure firms. This paper contributes in the accounting research in that it is the first paper of researching voluntary disclosure about the schedule of manufacturing cost and analyzing the differences of firm’s characteristics between disclosure firms and non－disclosure firms.