The European Union's response to recent financial reporting scandals on both sides of the Atlantic reached a crucial stage recently when the European Parliament voted to accept the new 8th Company Law Directive. It takes the minimum harmonisation route to set the basic standards that Member...

Environmental issues have attracted national attention and are becoming a focus at many firms. This paper examines the relation between stock price reactions to the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986 and environmental data. We find some evidence that chemical firms with...

We model limited attention as incomplete usage of publicly available information. Informed players decide whether or not to disclose to observers who sometimes neglect either disclosed signals or the implications of non-disclosure. In equilibrium observers are unrealistically optimistic,...

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 analyze how, in the absence of capital market incentives, the influence of existing competition on voluntary disclosure is an evolving process which has a non-monotonic design. The progressive capability of rivals to forecast significant information and the increasing losses of abnormal...

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 studies how an accountant's method of aggregating information in a financial report is affected by differences in the reliability and relevance of components of the report. We study a firm that hires an accountant to produce a report that reveals information to investors regarding the...

In many scenarios, investors in financial markets are uncertain about the relationship between two firms and have to rely on firms' disclosure of such relationship. We develop a theory to study the asset pricing implications of this relationship uncertainty and how such relationship uncertainty...

In this paper I attempt a taxonomy of the extant accounting literature on disclosure and suggest as categories: "association-based disclosure," work that studies the effects of disclosure on asset equilibrium prices and trading volume; "discretionary-based disclosure," work that examines...

This paper discusses Hirshleifer and Teoh's modeling and analysis of "inattentive investors," stock price valuation, and accounting recognition rules and disclosures. The paper derives many plausible empirical predictions from an equilibrium model in which some investors do not process...