We study asset recognition principles in terms of the level of uncertainty in the future benefits to such assets. From a real effects perspective, we establish that there is a threshold of uncertainty beyond which it is better to leave assets unmeasured and comingled with operating profits. We...

Accounting measurements of firms' investments are usually imprecise. We study the economic consequences of such imprecision in a setting where accounting imprecision interacts with information asymmetry regarding the ex ante profitability of the project that is privately known by the firm's...

This paper investigates the rationale for the measurement of a firm's periodic performance through the accounting classification of its cash outflows into operating cash flow and investment. We show that when the accounting system does not attempt to measure periodic performance and reports only...

This study experimentally tests the effect of information transparency on the probability of coordination failure in global games with finite signals. Prior theory has shown that in global games with unique equilibrium, the effect of information transparency is ambiguous. We find that in global...

Using a model with banking and insurance sectors, Allen and Carletti show that marking-to-market interacts with liquidity pricing to exacerbate the likelihood of financial contagion between the two sectors. In this discussion, I lay out the main ingredients of their model and explain how they...