There is limited empirical evidence on when and why individuals incur costs to acquire information about a firm that is not publicly available, which we refer to as private information acquisition. This lack of evidence is due in large part to the difficulty of observing private information...

I examine the effects of proprietary information on corporate transparency and voluntary disclosure. To do so, I develop and validate two measures of firms' reliance on trade secrecy: one based on 10-K disclosures and one based on subsequent litigation outcomes. I complement these measures by...

Although stock options are commonly observed in chief executive o±cer (CEO) compensation contracts, there is theoretical controversy about whether stock options are part of the optimal contract. Using a sample of Fortune 500 companies, we solve an agency model calibrated to the company-specific...