A growing literature documents that complex financial statements negatively affect the information environment. In this paper, we examine whether managers use voluntary disclosure to mitigate these negative effects. Employing cross-sectional and within-firm designs, we find a robust positive...

This paper examines how the ex ante level of public scrutiny influences a manager's subsequent decision to misreport. The conventional wisdom is that high levels of public scrutiny facilitate monitoring, suggesting a negative relation between scrutiny and misreporting. However, public scrutiny...

Several recent empirical papers assert that the decision to disclose an earnings forecast shortly before the actual earnings announcement reveals only short-term information and is therefore unlikely to entail proprietary costs. Using a simple dynamic model of voluntary disclosure, we show that...

This paper examines how credit rating levels affect municipal debt issuers' disclosure decisions. Using exogenous upgrades in credit rating levels caused by the recalibration of Moody's municipal ratings scale in 2010, we find that upgraded municipalities significantly reduce their disclosure of...