This essay reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on quality disclosure and certification. After comparing … quality disclosure with other quality assurance mechanisms and describing a brief history of quality disclosure, we address … government mandate disclosure? and (iii) Do certifiers necessarily report unbiased and accurate information? We further review …

Disclosure policies have the potential to help consumers and make markets more efficient. Yet, the effectiveness of … disclosure policies can be undermined if firms strategically make unfavorable information unnecessarily complicated to understand …. To explore the incentives for using complexity in disclosure, we implement a game of mandatory disclosure where senders …

as a result of voluntary disclosure and in turn increases firm value. This suggests that managers can causally influence … their cost of capital via voluntary disclosure …

We quantify the real implications of trade-offs between firm information disclosure and long-term investment efficiency … distort their real investment choices. The model implies a socially optimal level of disclosure regulation that exceeds the … estimated value. Counterfactual analysis reveals that eliminating earnings misreporting completely through disclosure regulation …

-term performance after the reform. The disclosure effects are stronger among plans with large average contributions per participant and …

This paper examines the link between disclosure and the cost of capital. We exploit an exogenous cost of capital shock … created by the Enron scandal in Fall 2001 and analyze firms' disclosure responses to this shock. These tests are opposite to … the typical research design that analyzes cost of capital responses to disclosure changes. In reversing the tests and …

We use an experiment to estimate the effect of the SEC's Summary Prospectus, which simplifies mutual fund disclosure …

We collect data on the rules and practices of financial and conflict disclosure by politicians in 175 countries …. Although two thirds of the countries have some disclosure laws, less than a third make disclosures available to the public …. Disclosure is more extensive in richer and more democratic countries. Disclosure is correlated with lower perceived corruption …

values. We show that mandatory disclosure through securities laws can decrease agency costs between corporate insiders and … post too much through lobbying by corporate insiders. With financial globalization, national disclosure laws can have wide …

disclose this information. We initially study the effect of disclosure rules assuming that firms are not liable for the harm … caused by their products. Although mandatory disclosure obviously is superior to voluntary disclosure given the information … about product risks that firms possess -- since such information has value to consumers -- voluntary disclosure induces …