Coherent Dempster–Shafer equilibrium and ambiguous signals

This paper reappraises the Dempster–Shafer equilibrium, a novel solution concept for signaling games introduced by Eichberger and Kelsey (2004), and suggests a new refinement approach. It is demonstrated that if the types of the Sender–but not messages–are assumed to be ex-ante unambiguous, then the Receiver’s conditional Choquet preference derived by the Dempster–Shafer updating rule coincides with subjective expected utility. This property of the pessimistic updating rule narrows the pooling, but not separating, Dempster–Shafer equilibrium to be behaviorally equivalent to the perfect Bayesian equilibrium. Moreover, if one refines the separating Dempster–Shafer equilibrium à la Ryan (2002a) by imposing the belief persistence axiom, then no deviations from the perfect Bayesian equilibrium are feasible. To eliminate Ryan’s type of behavior, a less stringent refinement based on the notion of coherent beliefs is elaborated.     

Patents, Invalidity, and the Strategic Transmission of Enabling Information

The patent system encourages innovation and knowledge disclosure by providing exclusivity to inventors. Exclusivity is limited, however, because a substantial fraction of patents have some probability of being ruled invalid when challenged in court. The possibility of invalidity—and an ensuing market competition—suggests that when an innovator's capability (e.g., cost of production) is private information, there is potential value to an innovator from signaling strong capability via a disclosure that transfers technical knowledge to a competitor. We model a product-innovation setting in which a valid patent gives market exclusivity and find a unique signaling equilibrium. One might expect that as the probability that a patent will be invalid becomes low, greater disclosure will be induced. We do not find this expectation to be generally supported. Further, even where full disclosure arises in equilibrium, it is only the less capable who make full disclosures. The equilibrium analysis also highlights many of the novel and appealing features of enabling knowledge disclosure signals.     

Welfare Effects of Endogenous Information Acquisition and Disclosure in Duopoly Markets

Abstract

This paper investigates the interaction between firms' information acquisition decisions and disclosure of internally acquired information in a Cournot duopoly market under demand uncertainty. The main results are as follows. When the correlation between firms' demands is positive and sufficiently high, disclosure of information on demand uncertainty can enhance social welfare, given that the quality of firms' private information is constant. However, in the setting where firms' private information is endogenously determined, mandatory disclosure is not always desirable. This is because, when disclosure is mandated, firms acquire less precise information compared with the case where the acquired information is not disclosed; hence, their internal information environments are deteriorated. This can lead to unintended consequences such that disclosure regulation decreases social welfare.     

Private and Social Incentives for Vertical Contract Disclosure

We follow the framework in Arya and Mittendorf's 2011 Rand Journal of Economics paper but extend their analysis by investigating supplier(s)' equilibrium choices of disclosure or confidentiality regarding their contract terms with the downstream retailers. In the case of a common supplier, we find that the unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) is for the supplier to choose disclosure. This private incentive is opposite to social incentive, which calls for the regulator to choose confidentiality. In the case of dedicated suppliers, however, there are multiple SPNE due to coordination issues between the suppliers. The case which maximizes social surplus – disclosure – can be supported as a SPNE, together with the case of confidentiality, which maximizes supplier profits at the cost of everyone else. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A market model of analysts’ opinions to explain changes in the dispersion of opinions

The demand for and supply of analysts’ opinions in this model yield an equilibrium that demonstrates how the information content of the opinions reacts to changes in exogenous parameters. The model also shows how changes in the parameters make analysts’ opinions more or less dispersed; for example, a decline in investor risk aversion, a decrease in market volatility, and an increase in information costs can lead to analysts’ opinions becoming more similar. Recognizing how exogenous factors can affect the supply and demand of analysts’ opinions gives additional insights into questions concerning what may appear to be herd behavior by analysts and also the relationship between forecast dispersion and information content. (JEL: G29, C71)     

信息披露质量与现金持有——来自深市A股上市公司的经验证据

本文以2006 ～ 2010年间深市非金融类A股上市公司为研究对象,利用深交所公布的上市公司信息披露考评结果作为信息披露质量的衡量方法,考察了信息披露质量对现金持有量的影响.研究发现,上市公司的信息披露质量与现金持有量显著负相关,即在其他条件不变的情况下,信息披露质量越高,企业持有的现金越少.这就从一个新的角度说明了提高信息披露质量确实能够减轻企业面临的信息不对称问题,从而能够缓和企业面临的融资约束问题以及股东与管理者之间的委托—代理问题.此外,研究还发现,行业竞争水平以及股权性质均对上市公司信息披露质量与现金持有量之间的关系具有显著的影响.     

企业代理成本与环境信息披露——基于管理层家乡情怀与市场化进程的调节效应

选取2012—2017年重污染行业上市公司的数据,基于企业内部管理层家乡情怀和外部市场化进程的调节作用,研究企业代理成本对环境信息披露质量的影响。研究结果表明：企业代理成本与环境信息披露质量负相关,环境信息披露质量会随着企业代理成本的提高而降低,而且这一效应在国有企业中更加显著;引入调节变量后,企业管理层家乡情怀与市场化进程均会对代理成本与环境信息披露之间的关系起到反向调节作用,有助于抑制企业代理成本提高所带来的不利影响。所得研究结论可以为如何降低企业代理成本、提高环境信息披露质量提供一些有益的借鉴和参考。     

政治关联、信息披露质量与债务融资成本

以2007年至2012年深圳证券交易所A股主板上市公司为研究对象,采用深交所公布的信息披露考评结果作为信息披露质量的代理变量,实证检验政治关联、信息披露质量和债务融资成本之间的关系,结果显示:企业信息披露质量的提升能够显著降低其债务融资成本;政治关联的存在削弱了企业信息披露质量与其债务融资成本之间的相关性。     

Buyer information and the hedonic: The impact of a seller disclosure on the implicit price for airport noise

Revealed preference methods like the hedonic model generally assume economic agents have access to publicly available information and use it effectively. In the housing market, the recent proliferation of seller disclosure laws suggests that policymakers perceive buyers to be less than “fully informed,” presumably since they face higher information acquisition costs than sellers. The introduction of an airport noise disclosure in the residential housing market surrounding the Raleigh–Durham International Airport is used as a quasi-random experiment to analyze the impact of this type of information asymmetry between buyers and sellers on housing prices. The results from a regression analysis that controls for potential spatial and temporal confounders, suggest that the airport noise disclosure reduced the value of houses most heavily impacted by airport noise by 2.9 percent. This represents approximately a 37 percentage point increase in the implicit price of airport noise. The results provide evidence that publicly available information, such as that available for airport noise, may not be adequately considered by all buyers. They also suggest that the information environment should be carefully considered when using housing data and the hedonic model to value urban amenities and disamenities.     

高管薪酬信息披露的经济后果研究

高管薪酬信息披露有助于提升公司薪酬契约透明度及治理效率,但同时增加了公司的信息披露成本.因此,高管薪酬信息披露对于公司的经济后果研究是一个值得探讨的话题.通过高管薪酬信息披露对薪酬水平、薪酬业绩敏感性的影响,观测我国高管薪酬信息披露的后果,并进一步观测不同产权性质公司间的影响差异.结果表明:信息披露政策抑制了高管薪酬水...     

Disclosure Regulation in Duopoly Markets: Proprietary Costs and Social Welfare

Abstract

The argument of proprietary costs is commonly used by firms to object against proposed disclosure regulations. The goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the welfare consequences of disclosure in duopoly markets and to identify market settings where proprietary costs are a viable argument for firms to remain silent. We, therefore, solve the optimal disclosure strategies and distinguish two different potentially costly effects of disclosing private information: the strategic information effect and the market information effect. We identify the market settings for which a regulator prefers to impose disclosure regulation so as to maximise consumer surplus or total surplus. Regulation may be necessary because (i) the increase in welfare outweighs proprietary costs to the firms, or (ii) firms are trapped in a prisoners' dilemma. The first primarily applies to Bertrand competition with demand uncertainty and, to a lesser extent, to Cournot competition. The second applies primarily to Cournot competition and Bertrand competition with cost uncertainty.     

Disclosure Policy in a Mixed Market

This paper investigates the optimal disclosure strategy for private information in a mixed duopoly market, where a state-owned enterprise (SOE) and a joint-stock company compete to supply products. I construct a model where the two firms compete in either quantity or price, and uncertainty is associated with either marginal cost or market demand. The model identifies the optimal disclosure strategies that constitute a perfect Bayesian equilibrium by type of competition and uncertainty. In Cournot competition, both firms disclose information under cost uncertainty, while only the SOE or neither firm discloses information under demand uncertainty. Alternatively, in Bertrand competition, only the joint-stock company discloses information under cost uncertainty or demand uncertainty. Recently, developed countries have required the same level of disclosure standards for SOEs as for ordinary joint-stock companies. The findings described in this paper warn that such mandatory disclosure by SOEs can trigger a reaction by joint-stock companies, putting the economy at risk of a reduction in welfare.     

Toward sustainable corporate behavior: The effect of the critical mass of female directors on environmental,social, and governance disclosure

Boards of directors have recently become more attentive to their stakeholders' concerns, providing more transparent information and adopting more sustainable business strategies. This study investigates the influence of a critical mass of women on boards on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure score and its three components separately. Using a sample of the FTSE-MIB listed companies in the 2005–2017 period, we show that reaching a critical mass of female board members—going from one or two women to at least three—enhances the level of ESG disclosure. The results also show that the critical mass of female board members has a positive influence on every component of the ESG score, with the highest contribution of women reaching the governance score. These findings provide insights to shareholders and policymakers and suggest that a critical mass of female board members is particularly effective in improving transparency, and it can be seen as a mechanism to transit to stakeholder governance, fostering more sustainable behavior in firms.     

食品安全信息披露的博弈分析

食品质量安全信息披露不足,导致消费者难以分辨食品的安全性,不能对市场中的食品产生信任。本文建立消费者与生产者的信号博弈模型并找寻了动态均衡路径,分析认为:食品生产企业要获得消费者信任并实现与低质量企业完全分离,必须披露更多的质量安全信息,同时高质量企业披露安全信息对企业有利。通过比较国外为获得消费者信任而加强食品安全信息披露的情况,指出现阶段国内食品安全信息披露的不足,提出引导高质量企业进行更多信息披露、加强信息沟通交流和落实信息披露机制的建议。     

A Paradigm for Masking (Camouflaging) Information

This is an expository paper. Here we propose a decision-theoretic framework for addressing aspects of the confidentiality of information problems in publicly released data. Our basic premise is that the problem needs to be conceptualized by looking at the actions of three agents: a data collector, a legitimate data user, and an intruder. Here we aim to prescribe the actions of the first agent who desires to provide useful information to the second agent, but must protect against possible misuse by the third. The first agent is under the constraint that the released data has to be public to all; this in some societies may not be the case.
A novel aspect of our paper is that all utilities—fundamental to decision making—are in terms of Shannon's information entropy. Thus what gets released is a distribution whose entropy maximizes the expected utility of the first agent. This means that the distribution that gets released will be different from that which generates the collected data. The discrepancy between the two distributions can be assessed via the Kullback–Leibler cross-entropy function. Our proposed strategy therefore boils down to the notion that it is the information content of the data, not the actual data, that gets masked. Current practice of "statistical disclosure limitation" masks the observed data via transformations or cell suppression. These transformations are guided by balancing what are known as "disclosure risks" and "data utility". The entropy indexed utility functions we propose are isomorphic to the above two entities. Thus our approach provides a formal link to that which is currently practiced in statistical disclosure limitation.     

Linkage lock-in and regional economic development: the case of the Øresund medi-tech plastics industry

This paper examines the role of interfirm linkages in influencing the dynamics of regional economic development. Developing a conceptual framework, we claim that switching costs (real or perceived) can lock firms into existing linkages with the potential effect of impeding regional economic development. A main argument is that in dynamic and competitive environments a class of switching costs, learning opportunity costs, might arise out of the relative importance of learning and innovation. We apply our framework to understand what goes on in the Øresund medi-tech plastics industry, taking as a starting point the lack of cross-border linkage participation in this industry. Through a case study research design we obtain evidence about the characteristics and dynamics of linkage lock-in and switching costs in this particular context and explain that learning opportunity costs prevail and make increased linkage participation across Øresund tardy. Promising future research arising from the present study includes enquiry into dissimilar industries, the possible intermediating role of third parties and the complementarities of the Danish and Swedish areas with a focus on the potential of cross-border regional specialization. All this would potentially add to a more complete picture of the notion of switching costs.     

Information asymmetry,sentiment interactions,and asset price

We develop an asset pricing model with sentiment interactions between institutional and individual investors under the condition of information asymmetry. Our model considers private information and investor sentiment, two imperfections in securities markets, and integrates them into a theoretical model to investigate the role of the interaction between information asymmetry and investor sentiment in asset pricing. We show that the joint effect of private information and investor sentiment deviate the price of risky assets and efficiently explains anomalies in the stock market. Investor sentiment changes the effect of information on the equilibrium price relative to a world where all investors are completely rational. Private information changes the effect of investor sentiment on the equilibrium price in comparison with a scenario with symmetric market information. In addition, the individual investors’ learning and the disclosure of information both allow private information to be better integrated into the price and simultaneously changes the effect of investor sentiment on the equilibrium price.     

The Influence of the Keiretsu on Japanese Corporate Disclosure

This paper represents a contribution to testing whether the extent of disclosure in Japanese corporate annual reports varies according to group structure. Consideration is given to keiretsu (group interfirm networks) classification and the mechanism for monitoring by a main bank or main company. This topic is of interest because the Japanese system of corporate governance is fundamentally different from those prevailing in Anglo-Saxon countries and this distinction may impact on corporate disclosure policy. Attention is focused on the exclusionary theory of corporate disclosure in which information is disseminated within group members but specifically excludes others. Regression analysis is undertaken to assess the importance of group structure in explaining variability in the extent of disclosure after controlling for known factors such as size, stock market listing, industry, borrowings, and type of business. The results suggest that companies within a keiretsu with a main-bank or main-company monitor and which are therefore less subject to capital market discipline do not disclose less information than other companies in their annual reports. It appears that whatever type of corporate governance mechanism is adopted in Japan there exists a monitor that places approximately equal demands on information disclosure in corporate annual reports.     

环境信息披露质量影响债务融资成本吗？——来自我国环境敏感型行业上市公司的经验证据

环境信息披露是银行评估企业或项目环境风险的重要信息来源。以我国环境敏感型行业2011—2016年上市公司为研究对象,采用固定效应模型实证分析环境信息披露质量对企业债务融资成本的影响,结果显示企业环境信息披露质量对债务融资成本的降低作用不显著;将环境信息分为货币性和非货币性信息,发现货币性环境信息披露的质量对降低债务融资成本有显著影响。如何提高非货币性环境信息的作用是未来值得关注的问题。     

Voluntary Disclosure by State-owned Enterprises Listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong

This study examines the impact of international capital market pressures on the voluntary disclosure of three types of information (strategic, financial, and non-financial) in the annual reports of former wholly state-owned People's Republic of China (PRC) enterprises, listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK). Consistent with a cost­benefit framework, we find that PRC H-Share firms disclose significantly more strategic and financial information than other SEHK firms. Additional analysis of disclosures in their home listings on the PRC exchanges, however, suggests an alternative explanation. The fact that these firms have been selected for "showcasing" in international capital markets may also play a role in our findings. While H-Share firm disclosures in the PRC also appear sensitive to management's assessment of the associated costs, the magnitude of differences across listing locations suggests that disclosure practices on the SEHK may also reflect the effects of state-encouraged disclosure policies. Our findings contribute to the understanding of disclosure behavior among former wholly state-owned enterprises and to the emerging literature on the efficacy of the privatization process.