Firm-specific information can affect expected returns if it affects investor uncertainty about risk-factor loadings. We show that a stock's expected return is decreasing in factor-loading uncertainty, controlling for the average level of its factor loading. When loadings are persistent, learning...

The increasing importance of intangible assets in modern economies is driving companies to include measures of intangible assets in managerial performance evaluations. For the multiperiod principal-agent model analyzed in this paper, a manager must be motivated to invest in intangible assets...

We examine a duopolistic setting in which firms pre-announce their future competitive decisions (e.g. prices, production quantities, capacity investments) before they actually undertake them. We show that firms overstate their future actions in their pre-announcements, and that their real action...

We examine a duopolistic setting in which firms can preannounce their future competitive decisions before they actually implement them. We show that there is a unique equilibrium in which both firms preannounce and overstate their future actions when uncertainty of demand is low. We find that...

We examine whether stress tests distort banks' risk-taking decisions. We study a model in which a regulator may choose to rescue banks in the event of concurrent bank failures. Our analysis reveals a novel coordination role of stress tests. Disclosure of stress-test results informs banks of the...

We examine the effects of mandating compensation disclosure on executive incentive contracts, earnings management, firm value, and social welfare. We develop a moral hazard model with multiple principal-agent pairs facing an external monitor who allocates resources across firms to verify...

Uniformity, the use of a common accounting measurement, is an essential feature of financial reporting, yet its desirability has long been debated. We study a model in which firms decide whether to adopt either their local accounting methods or a common method, followed by an investor allocating...

In this paper, we analytically examine firms' joint decisions to affect the informativeness of their key performance indicators (KPIs) and the accessibility of their supplementary disclosures (e.g., MD&A) when it is costly for investors to analyze the latter. We show that while disclosure...

This study presents and provides an explanation for a novel stylized fact: both high-performing public companies as well as more troubled companies withhold issuing guidance. We assume that the manager's ability affects the level of earnings and the accuracy of the guidance, but issuing a...

This paper examines how public information about the fundamental value of a firm affects the firm's stock price behavior and efficiency in the presence of Keynesian beauty contests when such information is heterogeneously interpreted by investors. In an overlapping generations rational...