Consumer protection in financial markets in the form of information disclosure is high on governments agendas, despite the fact that the empirical evidence on its effectiveness is scarce. To measure the impact of Truth-in-Lending-Act-type disclosures on default and indebtedness, as well as of...

Since the end of the 1990s, local governments in Japan have enacted Information Disclosure Ordinances, which require the disclosure of official government information. This paper uses Japanese prefecture-level data for the period 1998–2004 to examine how this enactment affected the rate of...

Electoral legislation varies across countries and within countries over time, and across different types of elections in terms of how it allows publication of intermediate election results including turnout and candidates' vote shares during an election day. Using a pivotal costly voting model...

Many countries conduct national standardized assessments of educational performance, the results of which may be published at the school level or at a higher level of aggregation. Publication at the school level potentially improves student achievements by holding schools accountable, whereas...

We estimate the economic impact of South Korea's targeted responses to the first large-scale COVID-19 cluster in Seoul. We find that foot traffic and retail sales decreased only within a 300 meter radius of the cluster and recovered to its pre-outbreak level after four weeks. The reductions...

This paper examines the impact of diagnostic efficiency on the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an exogenous policy on diagnostic confirmation, we show that a one- day decrease in the time taken to confirm the first case in a city publicly led to 9.4% and 12.7% reductions in COVID-19 prevalence and...

Our study proposes a novel mechanism to reduce information asymmetry about product quality between buyers and sellers. Product testing organizations like Consumer Reports (US) and Stiftung Warentest (Germany) seek to reduce this asymmetry by providing credible information. However, limited...

This paper examines individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) to offset their carbon footprint in response to receiving information about (i) the size of their own carbon footprint, and (ii) further receiving in addition information about the difference between their carbon footprint and the target...

The first green bond was issued in the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 2015 and since then the PRC has become a significant player in the world's green bond market. In just three years, green bond issuance in the PRC has skyrocketed from almost none to the country becoming one of the largest...

This paper discusses the relationship between stock market liquidity and corporate governance. Both concepts are widely investigated from different angles in the literature. It is generally agreed that they are related so that better corporate governance implies higher liquidity for shares of...