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 …

robustness to labor market competition both theoretically and experimentally. Consistent with our theoretical model, we observe … substantial ratchet effects in the absence of competition, which is nearly eliminated when competition is introduced; this is true …

The folk wisdom is that competition reduces agency costs. We provide indirect empirical support for this view. We argue … competitive industries, the negative relation between past returns and current leverage will be attenuated. Theory suggests that …

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 present evidence that complex disclosure can result from the strategic incentives to shroud information. We … make their reports. We find that senders use complex disclosure over half the time. Most of this obfuscation is profitable …

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 …

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 …

, in models of perfect competition, information differences across investors affect a firm's cost of capital through … cash flows covary. Thus, better disclosure can reduce a firm's cost of capital. Third, the precision effect does not give … well as to regulators who debate future disclosure requirements and the consequences of prior requirements such as …