The effects of xbrl adoption on the capital markets

Abstract

XBRL is a kind of programming language whose aim is to enhance the accuracy, reliability and decision-relevance of the financial and business information. This dissertation discusses the effects of XBRL adoption on the capital markets. For this purpose, the information asymmetry in Korean stock market and the earnings management of the U.S. companies are investigated. The result reveals that XBRL has an effect of reducing the information asymmetry and the earnings management. But the reduction of information asymmetry of stock price of small-sized companies is not strong compared to large-sized companies and the earnings management behavior of the companies with less independent board of directors is not reduced by the adoption of XBRL. This dissertation provides some explanations for these results; the taxonomy of XBRL is not technologically sophisticated enough and the software and service providers supporting the decision-making process using data in the XBRL format are not readily available in the market.