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Mattias Haraldsson. Photo.

Mattias Haraldsson

Senior lecturer

Mattias Haraldsson. Photo.

Reporting on COVID-19 – or not? Annual report disclosure of the pandemic as a subsequent event

Author

  • Pierre Donatella
  • Mattias Haraldsson
  • Torbjörn Tagesson

Summary, in English

Purpose: This paper focuses on the extent to which Swedish municipalities identified and communicated risks due to the COVID-19 outbreak early on. The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent the situational factors of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the likelihood of municipalities disclosing COVID-19 information as a subsequent event in the annual reports of 2019. Design/methodology/approach: Logistic regression models were used to estimate COVID-19 disclosure as a subsequent event. Data were handpicked from annual reports, audit reports and meeting minutes, or were retrieved from publicly available sources. Findings: Regression results indicate that municipalities issuing their annual report in a later stage of the pandemic, in regions with a higher number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, were more likely to disclose COVID-19 information as a subsequent event. However, the municipal factors used to capture the risk of a severe impact of the COVID-19 outbreak were not of major importance. In line with previous research, this study shows that political and institutional factors have explanatory power in predicting and explaining accounting disclosure choices. Originality/value: This paper contributes to research on accounting disclosures in urgent crises and on the specific topic of subsequent events in the public sector. Few studies address subsequent events in a corporate setting and, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, none do so in the context of the public sector. This paper also offers insight into how explanatory factors, previously tested under normal conditions and circumstances, influence disclosure choices in an early stage of a health crisis characterized by uncertainty regarding both occurrence and consequences.

Department/s

  • Accounting and Corporate Finance

Publishing year

2022

Language

English

Pages

117-136

Publication/Series

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management

Volume

24

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Topic

  • Public Health, Global Health, Social Medicine and Epidemiology

Keywords

  • Annual report
  • COVID-19
  • Crisis
  • Disclosure
  • Public sector accounting
  • Subsequent event

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1096-3367