Abstract
The study assesses corporate forward-looking disclosure by measuring four attributes,
namely disclosure quantity, disclosure coverage, disclosure concentration
and disclosure quality, through a sample of 34 listed firms in the Bahrain Bourse
from 2014 to 2017. The study also investigates the relationship between these attributes
and stock return volatility. Regression analysis has been employed with five
different models to examine the relationship between the four attributes of corporate
forward-looking disclosure and stock return volatility. The main finding of
this study agrees with the results of Bravo et al. (2009) who found that the selection
of a specific disclosure index could influence crucially the results of the analysis. In
addition, stock return volatility has a statistically significant negative association
with the three attributes of forward-looking disclosure, namely disclosure quantity,
disclosure coverage and disclosure quality. In contrast, it has a non-significant association
with the fourth attribute of forward-looking disclosure, disclosure concentration.
This study provides a novel contribution to disclosure quality studies
by being the first study to examine forward-looking disclosure quality attributes in the Kingdom of Bahrain.