Financial data democratization is one of the long-touted anticipated benefits of XBRL but is there any evidence that this has any foundation in reality? Well apparently there is. The Hitachi XBRL blog reports that recent research has established a link between the use of XBRL reporting and a rction in ‘information asymmetry where a select few investors have better aess to information’. At least it seems to suggest this in the case of the Korean stock market. This research is a good start to ‘proving’ that XBRL can assist with democratizing financial data. That’s good news because let’s face it, we’re way past the time when we want to rely too much on the guys with the red suspenders/braces, black Porsches and big green bonuses to figure out all this stuff for us.