This paper examines how earnings performance relates to firms' narrative R&D disclosure decisions. The unique nature of R&D investments and financial statements' limited ability to communicate the value of such investments highlight the role of narrative disclosure as a supplement to the...

We examine the relation between manager horizon and discretionary disclosure, using patenting as a measure of disclosure. Patenting reflects, in part, a manager's decision to disclose the successful outcome of research and development (R&D). When a firm invests in R&D but does not patent,...

We examine whether a firm's voluntary disclosures, proxied by management earnings forecasts, affect its innovation activity. A firm making more disclosures generates fewer patents and lower-quantity patents. Enactment of SOX is applied as a natural experiment for an exogenous shock to voluntary...

In principle, innovation and financial disclosure have little in common. Yet, previous studies have documented a positive association between financial disclosure quality and innovation. I shed light on this puzzle, by pointing to the fact that high quality disclosure fosters investors' trust,...

We study how the interplay of disclosure and regulation shapes capital allocation in reward crowdfunding. Using data from Kickstarter, the largest online reward crowdfunding platform, we show that, even in the absence of clear regulation and enforcement mechanisms, disclosure helps entrepreneurs...

We investigate the effect of patent disclosures on corporate innovation. Using the American Inventor's Protection Act (AIPA) as a shock that increased patent disclosures, we find an increase in innovation for firms whose rivals reveal more information after the AIPA and a decrease in innovation...

We employ a sharp regression discontinuity design to identify the causal effects of investor base disclosure on funding success and post-funding outcomes. Starting from February 2016, Kickstarter discloses backer statistics including geographic locations and previous funding experience of the...

We examine the spillover effect of public firm innovation disclosures on the patent trading market. Relative to equity markets, the patent market is decentralized and rife with information frictions, yet it serves as an important mechanism through which innovations reallocate to the most...

This paper examines how firms’ R&D disclosures are associated with collaborative innovation, measured by co-patenting intensity. Compared to solo patents, co-patents are more uncertain and face a greater risk of proprietary information leakage. We find that firms with more co-patents tend to...

Are pandemics systemically important to modern-day financial markets? This study uses the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment for testing how large-scale pandemics affect the financial markets. Using hand-collected data at the firm level, I find that managers systematically underestimated...