We apply modern machine learning techniques to characterize disclosure misclassification by public companies. We find that 12-26% of disclosures are misclassified; those concerning material definitive agreements, executive or director turnover, and delistings are most commonly misclassified. Using...

Voluntary disclosures convey information through two channels: 1) the direct revelation channel in which the disclosed body of information is used to update beliefs, and 2) the signaling channel in which inferences are drawn from the fact that the firm chose what information to disclose. I study...

Why do firms engage in costly, voluntary disclosure of informationwhich is subsumed by a later announcement? We consider a model inwhich the firm's manager can choose to disclose short-term informationwhich becomes redundant later. When disclosure costs are sufficientlylow, the manager discloses...

We study firms' voluntary disclosures in a world of potential information leaks. We find that managers adapt their disclosure strategy to the likelihood and expected scope of leaks. An increasing likelihood fosters voluntary disclosure if leaks merely expose the manager's information endowment...

We consider a standard persuasion problem in which the receiver’s action and the state of the world are both one-dimensional. Fully characterizing optimal signals when utilities are non-linear is a daunting task. Instead, we develop a general approach to understanding a key qualitative...

I study how voluntary disclosure of information affects outcomes in plea bargaining. A prosecutor negotiates a sentence with a defendant who privately knows whether he is guilty or innocent. The prosecutor can gather evidence regarding the defendant's type during negotiations, and a trial...

'Prominence' plays an important role in financial reporting – an entity might assign an item to the footnotes, report it below the line, or comment on it in a press release versus the MD&A. We propose a model where quantitative disclosures are classified as more or less prominent, based on...

This paper examines the relation between information's properties, such as reliability and relevance, and public disclosure policy. It shows that the optimal accounting system often involves a carefully balanced combination of mandatory and voluntary disclosure, with mandatory reporting focused...

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...