Effect of aggregate, mandatory and voluntary disclosure on firm performance in a developing market: The case of Kuwait

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between corporate disclosure and firm performance for the case of listed companies in the Kuwait Stock Exchanges (KSE). Our sample contains 51 non-financial firms that represent 42% of the total number of listed companies in Kuwait. The empirical results show that the linear relationship between aggregate, mandatory and voluntary disclosure and firm performance is not significant, while there is strong evidence for nonlinear relationship between the disclosure types and firm performance proxies. Specifically, we found strong evidence of U-shaped relationship between corporate disclosure and firm performance. Moreover, we found that the relationship between disclosure and firm performance is not governed by the firm size variable.