Voluntary Disclosure Of Partially Verifiable Information

I consider voluntary disclosure of nonproprietary information. Established research presents two classes of models. Some authors assume that the manager can be sanctioned prohibitively high if he lies. Others assume cheap talk. I analyze a setting with positive but non-prohibitive punishments. In my scenario, misreporting is part of the information equilibrium. To assess the consequences of such misreporting, I present two distinct cases: If the capital market is already well informed about possible firm values prior to the disclosure, the majority of misreportings is detected. If the capital market has only very rough information, misreportings may lead to failures in the market’s valuation and thus damage investors.