Voluntary disclosure and market value: empir cal evidence from social report publication in the European banking sector

The purpose of this work is to verify the existence of a relationship betwee stock price and publication of the company budget. The study considers a sample 131 listed European banks in the period 2002-2008. The results of empirical analysis (conducted using the value relevance analysi confirmed the existence of a significant but negative relationship between social r sponsibility and market value. The social report demonstrated its ability to reduc the relevance of book value per share. The results differ when the sample is se mented according to the size and governance. The cross-country analysis highlight the importance of the specificity of each of the 12 countries analysed.