Mandatory versus Voluntary Disclosure of Product Risks

Mandatory Versus Voluntary Disclosure of Product Risks

We analyze amodel in which firms are able to acquire information about product risks and may or may not be required to disclose this information. We initially study the effect of disclosure rules assuming that firms are not liable for the harm caused by their products. Mandatory disclosure is obviously superior to voluntary disclosure given the information about product risks that firms possess...

Voluntary Audits versus Mandatory Audits

Exploiting a natural experiment in which voluntary audits replace mandatory audits for U.K. private companies, we analyze whether imposing audits suppresses valuable information about the types of companies that would voluntarily choose to be audited. We control for the assurance benefits of auditing to isolate the role signaling plays by focusing on companies that are audited under both regime...

Essays on Mandatory and Voluntary Disclosure: The Stock Market

My dissertation examines the stock market’s assessment of corporate mandatory and voluntary disclosure. Specifically, the first part of the dissertation investigates the stock market reaction to the mandatory segment reporting changes and the second part studies how the stock market assesses credibility of voluntary management forecasts. The dissertation is composed of two essays. The first ess...

Mandatory Financial Reporting and Voluntary Disclosure: Evidence from Mandatory IFRS Adoption*

Using the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as an exogenous improvement to mandatory financial reporting, we document evidence supporting a complementary effect between mandatory and voluntary disclosures. We find that firms in countries that adopted IFRS in 2005 experience an increase in both the likelihood and frequency of management earnings forecasts r...

Voluntary versus Mandatory Approaches To Climate Change Mitigation