The Economics of Disclosure and Financial Reporting Regulation: Evidence and Suggestions for Future Research

This paper discusses the empirical literature on the economic consequences of disclosure and financial reporting regulation, drawing on U.S. and international evidence. Given the policy relevance of research on regulation, we highlight the challenges with (1) quantifying regulatory costs and benefits, (2) measuring disclosure and reporting outcomes, and (3) drawing causal inferences from regulatory studies. Next, we discuss empirical studies that link disclosure and reporting activities to firm‐specific and market‐wide economic outcomes. Understanding these links is important when evaluating regulation. We then synthesize the empirical evidence on the economic effects of disclosure regulation and reporting standards, including the evidence on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption. Several important conclusions emerge. We generally lack evidence on market‐wide effects and externalities from regulation, yet such evidence is central to the economic justification of regulation. Moreover, evidence on causal effects of disclosure and reporting regulation is still relatively rare. We also lack evidence on the real effects of such regulation. These limitations provide many research opportunities. We conclude with several specific suggestions for future research.     

Public Information Precision and Coordination Failure: An Experiment

More precise public disclosure reduces uncertainty about economic fundamentals, but it can increase uncertainty about other agents' actions, leading to coordination failure. We conducted a laboratory experiment to study the effects of public information precision and strategic complementarity on coordination failure. Information precision is operationalized in terms of “granularity” (level of detail). We found that (1) granular public disclosure, which is disaggregated and precise, increases the likelihood of coordination failure and decreases coordination efficiency when public information is pessimistic about future economic prospects; (2) the deleterious effect of granular disclosure is stronger when strategic complementarity is high; and (3) higher levels of strategic complementarity decrease coordination efficiency. Overall, the observed likelihood of coordination failure is higher and coordination efficiency is lower than predicted by theory. Our findings have implications for the Federal Reserve's decision to publicly disclose detailed stress test results for distressed banks, and the debate on whether the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board should publicly release reports on firm‐specific quality‐control deficiencies of audit firms.     

A Real Effects Perspective to Accounting Measurement and Disclosure: Implications and Insights for Future Research

Accounting measurement and disclosure rules have a significant impact on the real decisions that firms make. In this essay, we provide an analytical framework to illustrate how such real effects arise. Using this framework, we examine three specific measurement issues that remain controversial: (1) How does the measurement of investments affect a firm's investment efficiency? (2) How does the measurement and disclosure of a firm's derivative transactions affect a firm's choice of intrinsic risk exposures, risk management strategy, and the incentive to speculate? (3) How could marking‐to‐market the asset portfolios of financial institutions generate procyclical real effects? We draw upon these real effects studies to generate sharper and novel insights that we believe are useful not only for the development of accounting standards, but also for guiding future empirical research.     

Optimal internal control regulation: Standards,penalties, and leniency in enforcement

To protect investors, regulators increasingly rely on regulating firms’ internal controls over financial reporting, but they punish noncompliance only if an internal control weakness enabled accounting manipulation. In other words, enforcement is manipulation-contingent. We develop an economic model with a manager who sequentially chooses internal control quality and manipulative effort, and a welfare-maximizing regulator who determines an internal control standard, the penalty size for internal control weaknesses, and when to invoke such a penalty. Internal control regulation under manipulation-contingent enforcement not only provides incentives to invest in internal controls, but also improves manipulation deterrence when there are internal control weaknesses. The optimal regulation takes advantage of this additional deterrence effect by using a very strict internal control standard and an intermediate penalty that is only levied in the event of accounting manipulation. Overall, we rationalize why the commitment to lenient enforcement of internal control regulation is optimal.     

Short Selling Pressure,Stock Price Behavior,and Management Forecast Precision: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Using a natural experiment (Regulation SHO), we show that short selling pressure and consequent stock price behavior have a causal effect on managers’ voluntary disclosure choices. Specifically, we find that managers respond to a positive exogenous shock to short selling pressure and price sensitivity to bad news by reducing the precision of bad news forecasts. This finding on management forecasts appears to be generalizable to other corporate disclosures. In particular, we find that, in response to increased short selling pressure, managers also reduce the readability (or increase the fuzziness) of bad news annual reports. Overall, our results suggest that maintaining the current level of stock prices is an important consideration in managers’ strategic disclosure decisions.     

Financial Reporting and Credit Ratings: On the Effects of Competition in the Rating Industry and Rating Agencies' Gatekeeper Role

This paper studies firms' financial reporting incentives in the presence of strategic credit rating agencies and how these incentives are affected by the level of competition in the rating industry and by rating agencies' role as gatekeepers to debt markets. We develop a model featuring an entrepreneur who seeks project financing from a perfectly competitive debt market. After publicly disclosing a financial report, the entrepreneur can purchase credit ratings from rating agencies that strategically choose their rating fees and rating inflation. We derive the following core results: (1) More rating industry competition leads to stronger corporate misreporting incentives if ratings are sufficiently precise or if rating agencies assume a gatekeeper role. Under imperfect rating industry competition, (2) agencies' gatekeeper role primarily weakens firms' misreporting incentives, which then influences rating agencies' strategies, and (3) firms' misreporting and rating agencies' rating inflation can be strategic complements when agencies assume a gatekeeper role. (4) Regulatory initiatives aimed at increasing rating industry competition or at weakening rating agencies' gatekeeper role improve investment efficiency as long as corporate misreporting incentives are not significantly strengthened.