Start-up Firms and Discretion Over Deferment of Disclosure: An ex Ante and an ex Post Perspective

Abstract We examine deferment in the reporting of financial statements using an alternative measure of reporting delay based on start-up firms’ discretion over the length of the first reporting period. We explore discretion, exercised both by local GAAP adopters and by IFRS adopters, for a sample of Greek start-up firms using both an ex-ante and an ex-post research design. In addition to various factors previously considered by the accounting literature (i.e. performance, leverage, voluntary auditing, and the GAAP regime), we find that liquidity constraints, shareholders’ pressure, and increased noise in accounting measures are associated with a start-up firm’s reporting choice over the length of the first reporting period.