This study investigates differences in expert valuations of private versus public firms conducted for transactions outside the exchange. First, we provide evidence for extreme reliance of the experts on private firms' reported earnings, despite a possible manipulation of these earnings. In...

We have described a number of ‘invalidating factors,’ any one of which, if present, could account for the weakness or absence of the free rider problem in the voluntary provision of a public good. When any of these factors is present, the free rider phenomenon is not necessarily an...

This paper examines the issue of voluntary disclosure of information by firms with heterogeneous shareholders. It shows that, in a rational expectations setting, better-informed shareholders prefer less disclosure than less well-informed shareholders. This is due to differences in the adverse...

Listed firms in Japan are effectively compelled to report management forecasts of sales, ordinary income, and net income along with actual earnings and sales each year. Prior studies report that Japanese managers tend to announce optimistic forecasts of earnings. We show that a large part...

In this paper we show that the FASB Conceptual Framework stipulates two mutually conflicting definitions of relevance. Both the original FASB Concepts Statement No. 2 of May 1980 and the IASB/FASB Exposure Draft of May 2008 define relevance as the pertinence of the selected economic phenomenon...