Financial accounting affords considerable discretion to firms in aggregating internal information for external dissemination, yet little evidence exists about the consequences of such aggregation. We examine a central operational effect by studying whether withholding disaggregated cost...

This study examines how firms' voluntary disclosure decisions are influenced by product market competition. Using separate measures to capture different dimensions of competition, I show that competition from potential entrants increases disclosure quantity while competition from existing rivals...

This paper hypothesizes that if an earnings announcement fails to resolve uncertainty about the firm’s future outcomes, then management will take steps to further inform investors. The novelty of our approach consists of our empirical proxy for unresolved uncertainty, constructed using a...

We show that investors acquire more public information about firms to which they are more socially proximate. On average, a standard deviation increase in the Social Connectedness Index (Bailey et al., 2018) between a firm's headquarter county and a searcher county is associated with 30% more...

Public firms provide a large amount of information through their disclosures. In addition, information intermediaries publicly analyze, discuss and disseminate these disclosures. Thus, greater public firm presence in an industry should reduce uncertainty in that industry. Following the...

In listed companies, the Board of directors has ultimate responsibility for information disclosure. The conventional wisdom is that director independence is an essential factor in improving the quality of that disclosure. In a sense, this approach subordinates expertise to independence. We argue...

Provides an analysis of disclosures in fiscal years 2009 and 2010 by the 20 wealthiest private colleges in Massachusetts of their business relationships with firms affiliated with trustees. The study identifies widespread errors and omissions in reporting that raise questions about the quality...

Nonprofit organizations face intense competition in the market for charitable contributions. Increasingly, donation decisions are made online, and organizations have responded by implementing substantive Internet disclosure and reporting regimes. We posit here that the voluntary disclosure of...

We examine whether municipal market participants' sensitivity to changes in local home values varies with the quality of local governments' financial reports. We find the credit ratings and bond yields of governments that are required to comply with GAAP are less sensitive to changes in local...

Also in the digital age, markets work properly as long as consumers are well informed. What is peculiar of the digital age is that consumers have become very fragile, also because firms can extensively manipulate the information that they produce and distribute to markets. Antitrust authorities...