Redacted Disclosure

In this paper we investigate a firm's decision to redact proprietary information from its material contract filings. Information redaction results when the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) grants a firm's request to withhold information from investors in its material contract filings, presumably because the information is proprietary. We hypothesize that when firms redact information, measures of adverse selection deteriorate. That is, the redaction of proprietary information from material contracts should be associated with: a larger adverse selection component of the bid‐ask spread, reductions in market depth, and lower market turnover. In addition, we conjecture that the decision to redact depends on whether the firm plans on raising capital, the competitiveness of the firm's industry, and the performance of the firm. Overall the results of our analysis generally support our predictions. We find that when firms redact information, contemporaneous measures of the adverse selection component of the bid‐ask spread rise, and market depth and share turnover deteriorate; this suggests an increase in adverse selection. We also find firms are less likely to redact when they issue long‐term debt and are more likely to redact when they are in a competitive industry or experience losses.     

Symposium on Public Policy Issues in Finance

The thesis of this symposium, organized by James Bicksler, was that while finance theory will surely inform practitioners, it seems appropriate to pay some attention to the opposite flow: practitioners can inform theory. Contributors include a distinguished group of practitioners with extensive backgrounds in economics, and economists with extensive public policy experience: Martin Feldstein, Robert Glauber, David Mullins, and Steven Wallman. Their topics range from privatizing social security, to managing market crashes, to the regulatory agency cost problem, to regulatory constraints in a technologically advanced world.     

MALE-FEMALE SALARY DIFFERENTIALS IN BRITISH UNIVERSITIES

The average salary differential between male and female academicsin Britain in 1992 exceeded 15%. Using individual data coveringall full-time academic staff in the old universities for theyears 1975, 1985, and 1992, we find that a significant partof the differential is explained by the fact that women areunder-represented in senior ranks. However, even after controllingfor rank, age, tenure, and faculty, a gender effect in the remunerationof British academics remains. Moreover, neither the averagesalary-gap nor that part attributable to an independent gendereffect have fallen since 1975.     

MARKET STRUCTURE, PROGRAM DIVERSITY, AND RADIO AUDIENCE SIZE

This paper examines the relationships among radio station listenership, the number of program formats, and the number of stations. These relationships are statistically significant and consistent with theory, but the interrelationships are numerically small. The results imply that proposals by the federal Communications Commission and Congress to relax ownership restrictions must induce substantial changes in station numbers in order to noticeably increase programming diversity. Merely modest changes in these numbers will have only small diversity effects. The paper's results also imply that merely mandating the number of formats in a market may not be in the interests of listeners.     

Safety of the U.S. food supply: consumer concerns and behaviour

To examine consumer concern about food safety, identify characteristics of those most concerned, and determine behavioural responses to concerns, we used mailed questionnaires to survey a random sample of 630 adults. Eighty-eight percent of respondents were very or somewhat concerned about safety of the food supply. Subjects perceived greatest likelihood of harm from chemicals and lowest likelihood of harm from bacterial contamination. Relative to other concerns about food such as cost or taste, food safety ranked low. Because the concern was across all ages, education levels, genders, and places of residence, we were unable to define a type of person most likely to be concerned about food safety. Less than half the subjects had changed dietary behaviour in response to food safety concerns. Foods reduced or eliminated from the diet most often were meats, fruits, eggs and vegetables. The findings indicate that consumers need risk assessment education and help in making food choices that do not compromise diet quality.