Firm-specific determinants of continuous corporate disclosures

We examine the frequency and regularity of online announcements on the stock exchange websites of companies included in the Morgan Stanley Capital Index for small-cap firms in eight developed markets in Asia and Europe. We find that firms with higher information asymmetry have a higher frequency and regularity of continuous online reporting. Our results also show that the frequency and regularity of online disclosure is positively associated with agency costs, earnings, and analyst following and is inversely related to the length of the product cycle of a firm. Our results are more robust for discretionary disclosures. We also find variations in the frequency of disclosures by countries, some of which are explainable by the online disclosure settings of the countries.