This paper uses a Pragmatic theory of language (drawn from philosophy and linguistics) to diagnose the causes of excessive and inefficient financial disclosure and propose a regulatory solution. The diagnosis is that existing regulations are effective at encouraging firms to adhere to some, but...

Theoretical and empirical research suggests that firms can reduce their cost of capital by providing more informative disclosures about the value of their securities. We provide convergent evidence on this issue by demonstrating that improved disclosure reduces cost of capital in a controlled...

Improved disclosure increases prices and liquidity in a laboratory financial market, and does so more strongly when investors face the risk of unpredictable demand shocks. These results are consistent with a broad class of theoretical and empirical studies. Disclosure has larger effects on...

We contribute to the debate regarding the informativeness of pro forma earnings disclosures by providing evidence that a group of informed traders, short sellers, trade as if firms' voluntary non-GAAP earnings disclosures create information advantages they can exploit. While prior research...

We investigate a firm's decision to initiate earnings guidance during its first year as a public company following its initial public offering (IPO), which we label “early guidance.” Using a sample of firms with IPOs between 2001 and 2010, we find that almost 60% of our IPO firms provide...