Author: Oliver J. Board Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
There are many laws that require sellers to disclose private information about the quality of their products. But the theoretical justification for these laws is not obvious: economic theory predicts that a seller will voluntarily disclose such quality information, however unfavorable, as long as it is costless to do so. Here we show that competitive pressures between firms can undermine this full disclosure result, and explain why it may be the case that only high-quality firms choose to disclose. In this setting, mandatory disclosure laws can promote competition and raise consumer surplus at the expense of firm profits, potentially increasing the efficiency of the market.
Author: Hanyong Chung Publisher: ISBN: Category : Accounting Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This study examines how product market competition affects firms' mandatory disclosure strategies. Using the information in the SEC comment letters, I observe that firms in a highly competitive market are more likely to file unaudited mandatory disclosures with deficiency. I also find that firms facing higher competition from potential entrants tend to bundle positive (negative) mandatory items with the negative (positive) management earnings forecasts. These findings support my conjecture that firms exercise discretion in the mandatory disclosure through less transparent ways, due to a proprietary cost resulting from market competition. Additional analyses demonstrate a positive economic consequence of such disclosure strategy, and the relationship between market competition and mandatory disclosure strategies is stronger for industry followers than for industry leaders.
Author: Yong-Chul Shin Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This paper investigates empirically the effect of different types of product market competition on levels of voluntary disclosure of proprietary information in financial markets. Firms, considering a disclosure, trade off attaining financial market valuation-related benefits vs. protecting long-term product market advantage. Based on economic theory, I propose that there are two types of strategic interaction settings relevant to disclosure: Capacity competition drives firms to disclose more; price competition drives them to disclose less. When firms are competing on capacities, firms disclose more information to lower the cost of capital needed for capital investments. In contrast, when firms are competing on prices, they disclose less information because proprietary costs are high and the benefit from any decreased cost of capital is low due to less acute need for additional capital. By estimating the signs of the slope of reaction curves to identify the type of competition facing firms in oligopoly markets, I find that the type of product market competition affects the level of voluntary disclosure over and above what pervious literature has documented as the firm's external financing needs. That is, firms engaged in capacity competition disclose relatively more information than firms engaged in price competition. Further analysis after including as benchmarks firms with no strategic interaction, shows that capacity competition firms disclose more information than no-strategic-interaction firms but that price competition firms do not disclose less information than no-strategic-interaction firms.
Author: Li, Xi Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This study examines how firms' voluntary disclosure decisions are influenced by product market competition. Using separate measures to capture different dimensions of competition, I show that competition from potential entrants increases disclosure quantity while competition from existing rivals decreases disclosure quantity. I also find that competition enhances disclosure quality mainly through reducing the optimism in profit forecasts and reducing the pessimism in investment forecasts. Moreover, I find that the above association is less pronounced for industry leaders, consistent with industry leaders facing less competitive pressures than industry followers.
Author: Flora Muiño Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 53
Book Description
In this paper, we argue that the influence product market competition exerts on disclosure is defined by the combined effect of the incentives and disincentives to disclose raised by the multiple competition dimensions. We distinguish between firm and industry level competition measures, and we hypothesize that the former raises agency and proprietary costs, whereas the latter creates incentives to disclose either to fulfill the owners' need of information to monitor managers or to deter the entrance of new competitors in the industry. Our research design allows for non-monotonic relationships between competition and disclosure as well as for interactions between competition dimensions. Using a sample of U.S. manufacturing companies, we gather evidence that is consistent with our hypotheses. First, we find an inverted U-shape relationship between corporate disclosure and a firm's abnormal profitability, which is suggestive of firms being reluctant to disclose when they are underperforming (outperforming) their rivals because of the fear of unveiling agency conflicts (raising proprietary costs). Second, we observe a U-shape relationship between corporate disclosure and industry profitability, although this U design evolves to approximate a rising function as the protection provided by entry barriers increases.
Author: Jesal Sheth Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The theory of voluntary disclosure of information posits that market forces lead senders to disclose information through a process of unravelling. This prediction requires that receivers hold correct beliefs and, in equilibrium, make adverse inferences about non-disclosed information. Previous research finds that receivers do not sufficiently infer non-disclosure as bad news, leading to the failure of complete unravelling. This paper experimentally examines whether competition between senders when receivers strongly prefer disclosed over nondisclosed information increases unravelling. We further examine whether receivers' naivety about non-disclosed information decreases with competition between senders. We find that complete unravelling fails to occur without competition. However, with competition, there is significantly higher unravelling such that it increases receivers' overall welfare. Interestingly, receivers' welfare increases despite no significant difference in their guesses or beliefs about non-disclosed information relative to the treatment without competition. We conclude that competition between senders positively affects disclosure of information and receivers' welfare.
Author: Jos Jansen Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Competitive pressure is lower in markets where goods are more differentiated. I analyze how a change in the degree of horizontal product differentiation affects the incentives of duopolists to disclose quality information. If disclosure is costly, then a firm discloses high qualities but conceals low qualities in equilibrium. The higher the disclosure cost, the higher the equilibrium threshold below which firms conceal quality information. I show that the effect of product differentiation on quality disclosure depends on the cost of disclosure. For low (high) disclosure costs, a firm discloses more (respectively, less) quality information if goods become more differentiated.
Author: Dan Levin Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
We analyze costly quality disclosure with horizontally differentiated products under duopoly and a cartel, and characterize the effect of competition on disclosure and welfare. We show that expected disclosure is higher under a cartel than under duopoly, and the welfare comparison depends on the level of disclosure cost: when the disclosure cost is low, welfare is higher under a cartel than duopoly, but when the disclosure cost is high, welfare is higher under duopoly. In either market structure, disclosure is excessive in terms of total surplus, but insufficient in terms of consumer surplus.
Author: Oliver J. Board
Author: Hanyong Chung
Author: Narayanaswamy Ramaswami
Author: Yong-Chul Shin
Author: Li, Xi
Author: Flora Muiño
Author: Jesal Sheth
Author: Lucy F. Ackert
Author: Jos Jansen
Author: Dan Levin