Purpose: The impairment-only approach to goodwill has regularly been criticized for offering too much discretion to managers and facilitating the manipulation of goodwill impairment losses. Extant research provides mixed results on whether managers exploit their inherent discretion...

Prior research documented that higher disclosure quality reduces information asymmetry and cost of capital. Accordingly, firms have an incentive to comply with disclosure requirements and to provide voluntary disclosure. However, prior research on mandatory disclosures on goodwill impairment...

Most international stock exchanges distinguish solely between domestic and foreign issuers, whereas in Germany, issuers can choose between two market segments with diverse transparency levels: the Prime Standard and Non-Prime Standard segment. Transparency requirements for the Non-Prime Standard...