Labels certify that a product meets some standard for quality, but often consumers are unsure of the exact standard that the label represents. Focusing on the case of eco-labels for environmental quality, we show how even small amounts of uncertainty can create consumer confusion that reduces or eliminates the value to firms of adopting voluntary labels. First, consumers are most suspicious of ...

How do rating changes affect investor behavior and price informativeness? In a model with endogenous information acquisition and investors with limited attention, we show that the returns to information and the informativeness of the price system increase after a downgrade, but should not experience a significant change after an upgrade. Using a sample of U.S. publicly traded firms that experie...

We explore whether uncertainty avoidance, an important aspect of national culture, influences the level informativeness share prices about future earnings. Uncertainty avoidance relates to extent which members a society feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations. employ data from 20 countries, comprising 26,882 firm-year observations reporting under same accounting standards. Using pane...

The notion of informativeness in information science will be analyzed from a theoretical and empirical point of view and related to the concepts of relevance and information quality.

Spencer Phillips Hey and Aaron Kesselheim propose that informativeness-asserting scientific facts-rather than truthfulness ought to be the standard for regulating commercial speech about pharmaceuticals.