This study explores a natural experiment that involves the change in the regulation of earnings forecast disclosures from mandatory to voluntary in firms' IPO prospectuses. Findings indicate a behavioural alteration with pessimistic earnings forecasts during the mandatory era turning optimistic...

This paper studies how financial frictions affect product market decisions. As different products have different production cycles and generate cash-flow at different maturities, companies may adjust product mix in order to alleviate financial constraints. I use the wine sector in Portugal as a...

We study bank specialization in lending in the U.S. corporate loan market. We document that banks specialize in lending to specific industries. Specialization is persistent over time and common across industries. Using detailed information on syndicated loans, we show that the typical loan...

Numerous rules mandate the disclosure of information. This article analyzes why such rules are enacted. Specifically, 1) why wouldn't firms voluntarily disclose their private information; and 2) given that voluntary disclosure would not be forthcoming, who has the incentive to lobby for...

We develop a unified treatment of a broad class of truthful disclosure games. Such games have, at most, one equilibrium that is reasonable given a commonly used signaling refinement. We provide a simple algorithm to construct the unique equilibrium strategy and beliefs, and identify necessary...

We examine whether managers’ activities in striving to reach earnings targets affect their firms’ product quality. We find that firms suspected of manipulating real activities in trying to meet earnings benchmarks exhibit a higher likelihood and frequency of product recalls. Other evidence...

We investigate whether information transparency at the industry level is associated with the sustainability of within-industry differences in profitability. Since competitive actions lead to the elimination of intra-industry profitability differences, this investigation provides evidence on...

Using a sample of long-term supply contracts collected from SEC filings, I show that hold-up concerns and information asymmetry are important determinants of contract design. Asymmetric information between buyers and suppliers leads to shorter term contracts. However, when longer duration...

This study examines how industry peers share information when they are engaged in tacit collusion. We develop a model of firms' information sharing and production decisions and use it to establish that firms engaged in tacit collusion are more likely to share information when current market...

This paper provides evidence to show that in the presence of imperfect formal institutions there is both a substitutional and a complementary relationship between accounting information and reputation, an informal institution. Empirical results using a sample of family firms listed in the...