Unfavorable news are often delivered under the disguise of vagueness. Our theory-driven laboratory experiment investigates this strategic use of vagueness in voluntary disclosure and asks whether there is scope for policy to improve information transmission. We find that vagueness is profitably...

The theory of voluntary disclosure of information posits that market forces lead senders to disclose information through a process of unravelling. This prediction requires that receivers hold correct beliefs and, in equilibrium, make adverse inferences about non-disclosed information. Previous...

We use a natural experiment to weigh conflicting theories on the causal impact of shareholder litigation threat on the readability of corporate financial disclosures. In response to a 1999 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that caused an unexpected reduction in litigation risk, we find that...

Personal information is shared extensively every day, partly in exchange for benefits or as a reaction to other people's information sharing. In this paper, we experimentally investigate these two factors by analyzing the interaction of peer comparison and incentives to disclose potentially...

We examine whether a firm's decision to disclose non-financial proprietary information depends on peer disclosures of similar information. Using a sample of 5,035 unique clinical trials by U.S. pharmaceutical firms over the 2007-2014 period, we find that the firm is less likely to disclose its...

We consider a dynamic model featuring two firms that test a regulator’s enforcement propensity through their misconduct and a regulator that disciplines them to build a reputation for strict enforcement. We show that when the regulator has full discretion over the enforcement criterion, peer...