A ‘macro’ analysis of the use of XBRL

extensible business reporting language (XBRL) is increasingly used for reporting to shareholders, filing with stock exchange regulators and for decision making and taxation purposes. This paper provides a macro analysis of the use of XBRL in the USA and UK and highlights some directions for further research. It finds that the pace of XBRL adoption across countries and industries varies. The country analysis suggests that there has been greater support and adoption of XBRL in the USA as compared to the UK. Moreover, XBRL seems to be widely used in the financial services sector as compared to others. This paper identifies several areas for research at the macro country and industry level and the micro company level. It is argued that greater support from the accounting profession and regulators is required to raise XBRL awareness and speed the pace of adoption in practice.