High quality disclosures can promote investor confidence and facilitate capital market development, but evidence on market-level consequences of confidence associated with disclosures is sparse. Using a survey-based measure that directly captures beliefs about disclosure quality in a panel with...

Using a survey-based measure that directly captures beliefs about disclosure quality (SFARS) in a panel with over 1,000 country-year observations, this study examines macro-level capital market consequences of confidence in disclosure quality. Supporting construct validity, SFARS is associated...

I present a critique on the common assumption of fixed proprietary costs of disclosure used in discretionary disclosure models. I show that proprietary costs that are fixed, i.e., independent of the disclosed information, are inherently contradictory. To sustain independence requires either that...

Firms often undertake activities that do not necessarily increase cash flows (e.g., costly investments in corporate social responsibility, or CSR), and some investors value these non-cash activities (i.e., they have a "taste" for these activities). We develop a model to capture this phenomenon...

This study examines the costs and benefits of uniform accounting regulation in the presence of heterogeneous firms who can lobby the regulator. A commitment to uniform regulation reduces economic distortions caused by lobbying by creating a free-rider problem between lobbying firms at the cost...