The Determinants of Nonfinancial Information Disclosure in Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A)

The significance of intangible assets in a knowledge-based economy and the decrease in value-relevance of financial information increase the demand for nonfinancial information disclosure. In this regard, we examine the determinants of the nonfinancial information disclosed in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A). Whereas prior studies investigate the level of voluntary dis-closure, we examine the level of nonfinancial information. We conduct a contents- analysis, using a modified computational linguistic program. Using the frequency of nonfinancial information, we find that firms with more intangible assets, higher quality of board monitoring, and larger size disclose more nonfinancial information in MD&A.