IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v140y2021i1p21-53.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Voluntary disclosure with evolving news

Author

Listed:
  • Aghamolla, Cyrus
  • An, Byeong-Je

Abstract

We study a dynamic voluntary disclosure setting where the manager’s information and the firm’s value evolve over time. The manager is not limited in her disclosure opportunities, but disclosure is costly. The results show that the manager discloses even if this leads to a price decrease in the current period. The manager absorbs this price drop in order to increase her option value of withholding disclosure in the future. That is, by disclosing today, the manager can improve her continuation value. The results provide a number of novel empirical predictions regarding asset prices and disclosure patterns over time. These include, among others, that disclosures are negatively correlated in time, and stock return skewness is negatively correlated with lagged returns for firms with low uncertainty over their future profitability, in more competitive industries, and in industries with less informative public news.

Suggested Citation

  • Aghamolla, Cyrus & An, Byeong-Je, 2021. "Voluntary disclosure with evolving news," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 21-53.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:140:y:2021:i:1:p:21-53
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2020.11.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X2030310X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfineco.2020.11.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Skinner, Dj, 1994. "Why Firms Voluntarily Disclose Bad-News," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(1), pages 38-60.
    2. Campbell, John Y. & Hentschel, Ludger, 1992. "No news is good news *1: An asymmetric model of changing volatility in stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 281-318, June.
    3. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 461-483, December.
    4. Patrick J. Kelly, 2014. "Information Efficiency and Firm-Specific Return Variation," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 4(04), pages 1-44.
    5. Thaddeus Neururer & George Papadakis & Edward J. Riedl, 2016. "Tests of investor learning models using earnings innovations and implied volatilities," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 400-437, June.
    6. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2001. "Forecasting crashes: trading volume, past returns, and conditional skewness in stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 345-381, September.
    7. Daniel Aobdia, 2018. "Employee mobility, noncompete agreements, product-market competition, and company disclosure," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 296-346, March.
    8. Campbell, John Y., 1987. "Stock returns and the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 373-399, June.
    9. Amaya, Diego & Christoffersen, Peter & Jacobs, Kris & Vasquez, Aurelio, 2015. "Does realized skewness predict the cross-section of equity returns?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(1), pages 135-167.
    10. Hyun Song Shin, 2003. "Disclosures and Asset Returns," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 105-133, January.
    11. Chan, Kalok & Chan, Yue-Cheong, 2014. "Price informativeness and stock return synchronicity: Evidence from the pricing of seasoned equity offerings," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 36-53.
    12. Boyan Jovanovic, 1982. "Truthful Disclosure of Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 36-44, Spring.
    13. Skinner, Douglas J., 1997. "Earnings disclosures and stockholder lawsuits," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 249-282, November.
    14. Glosten, Lawrence R & Jagannathan, Ravi & Runkle, David E, 1993. "On the Relation between the Expected Value and the Volatility of the Nominal Excess Return on Stocks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 1779-1801, December.
    15. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    16. Ghysels, Eric & Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2005. "There is a risk-return trade-off after all," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 509-548, June.
    17. Re‐Jin Guo & Baruch Lev & Nan Zhou, 2004. "Competitive Costs of Disclosure by Biotech IPOs," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 319-355, May.
    18. Sadka, Ronnie, 2006. "Momentum and post-earnings-announcement drift anomalies: The role of liquidity risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 309-349, May.
    19. Dye, Ra, 1985. "Disclosure Of Nonproprietary Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(1), pages 123-145.
    20. Viral V. Acharya & Peter DeMarzo & Ilan Kremer, 2011. "Endogenous Information Flows and the Clustering of Announcements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 2955-2979, December.
    21. Anilowski, Carol & Feng, Mei & Skinner, Douglas J., 2007. "Does earnings guidance affect market returns? The nature and information content of aggregate earnings guidance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 36-63, September.
    22. Artyom Durnev & Randall Morck & Bernard Yeung & Paul Zarowin, 2003. "Does Greater Firm‐Specific Return Variation Mean More or Less Informed Stock Pricing?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(5), pages 797-836, December.
    23. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard, 1985. "Does the Stock Market Overreact?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(3), pages 793-805, July.
    24. Dye, Ra & Sridhar, Ss, 1995. "Industry-Wide Disclosure Dynamics," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(1), pages 157-174.
    25. Ball, R & Brown, P, 1968. "Empirical Evaluation Of Accounting Income Numbers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 159-178.
    26. Baik, Bok & Jiang, Guohua, 2006. "The use of management forecasts to dampen analysts' expectations," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 531-553.
    27. Verrecchia, Robert E., 1983. "Discretionary disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 179-194, April.
    28. Brandt, Michael W. & Kang, Qiang, 2004. "On the relationship between the conditional mean and volatility of stock returns: A latent VAR approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 217-257, May.
    29. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R. & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2005. "The economic implications of corporate financial reporting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-3), pages 3-73, December.
    30. Campbell R. Harvey & Akhtar Siddique, 2000. "Conditional Skewness in Asset Pricing Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1263-1295, June.
    31. Ilan Guttman & Ilan Kremer & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2014. "Not Only What but Also When: A Theory of Dynamic Voluntary Disclosure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2400-2420, August.
    32. Teoh, Siew Hong & Hwang, Chuan Yang, 1991. "Nondisclosure and Adverse Disclosure as Signals of Firm Value," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(2), pages 283-313.
    33. Dennis, Patrick & Mayhew, Stewart, 2002. "Risk-Neutral Skewness: Evidence from Stock Options," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 37(3), pages 471-493, September.
    34. Frank S. Zhou & Yuqing Zhou, 2020. "The Dog that Did Not Bark: Limited Price Efficiency and Strategic Nondisclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 155-197, March.
    35. Mark Bagnoli & Ted Bergstrom, 2006. "Log-concave probability and its applications," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Charalambos D. Aliprantis & Rosa L. Matzkin & Daniel L. McFadden & James C. Moore & Nicholas C. Yann (ed.), Rationality and Equilibrium, pages 217-241, Springer.
    36. Nelson, Daniel B, 1991. "Conditional Heteroskedasticity in Asset Returns: A New Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 347-370, March.
    37. Jung, Wo & Kwon, Yk, 1988. "Disclosure When The Market Is Unsure Of Information Endowment Of Managers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 146-153.
    38. Whitelaw, Robert F, 1994. "Time Variations and Covariations in the Expectation and Volatility of Stock Market Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(2), pages 515-541, June.
    39. Bernard, Vl & Thomas, Jk, 1989. "Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift - Delayed Price Response Or Risk Premium," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27, pages 1-36.
    40. Gregory S. Miller, 2002. "Earnings Performance and Discretionary Disclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 173-204, March.
    41. Eti Einhorn & Amir Ziv, 2008. "Intertemporal Dynamics of Corporate Voluntary Disclosures," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 567-589, June.
    42. Engle, Robert & Mistry, Abhishek, 2014. "Priced risk and asymmetric volatility in the cross section of skewness," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 182(1), pages 135-144.
    43. French, Kenneth R. & Schwert, G. William & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1987. "Expected stock returns and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 3-29, September.
    44. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan, 1990. "Evidence of Predictable Behavior of Security Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(3), pages 881-898, July.
    45. Jesse A. Ellis & C. Edward Fee & Shawn E. Thomas, 2012. "Proprietary Costs and the Disclosure of Information About Customers," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(3), pages 685-727, June.
    46. Iván Marinovic & Felipe Varas, 2016. "No news is good news: voluntary disclosure in the face of litigation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(4), pages 822-856, November.
    47. De Bondt, Werner F M & Thaler, Richard H, 1987. "Further Evidence on Investor Overreaction and Stock Market Seasonalit y," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 557-581, July.
    48. Kross, William J. & Ro, Byung T. & Suk, Inho, 2011. "Consistency in meeting or beating earnings expectations and management earnings forecasts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 37-57.
    49. Kross, William J. & Ro, Byung T. & Suk, Inho, 2011. "Consistency in meeting or beating earnings expectations and management earnings forecasts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 37-57, February.
    50. Ginger Zhe Jin, 2005. "Competition and Disclosure Incentives: An Empirical Study of HMOs," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(1), pages 93-112, Spring.
    51. Phillip C. Stocken, 2000. "Credibility of Voluntary Disclosure," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(2), pages 359-374, Summer.
    52. Lundblad, Christian, 2007. "The risk return tradeoff in the long run: 1836-2003," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 123-150, July.
    53. Black, Fischer, 1976. "The pricing of commodity contracts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 167-179.
    54. Hyun Song Shin, 2006. "Disclosure Risk and Price Drift," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 351-379, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cyrus Aghamolla & Carlos Corona & Ronghuo Zheng, 2021. "No reliance on guidance: counter‐signaling in management forecasts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(1), pages 207-245, March.
    2. You, Linqing & Chen, Zhuoqiong, 2022. "A theory of firm opacity and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    3. Elizabeth Blankespoor & Bradley E. Hendricks & Joseph Piotroski & Christina Synn, 2022. "Real-time revenue and firm disclosure," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 1079-1116, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Beyer, Anne & Cohen, Daniel A. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Walther, Beverly R., 2010. "The financial reporting environment: Review of the recent literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 296-343, December.
    2. Konrad Lang, 2018. "Voluntary Disclosure and Analyst Forecast," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 23-36, January.
    3. Keunbae Ahn, 2021. "Predictable Fluctuations in the Cross-Section and Time-Series of Asset Prices," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2021.
    4. Bertomeu, Jeremy & Marinovic, Iván & Terry, Stephen J. & Varas, Felipe, 2022. "The dynamics of concealment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(1), pages 227-246.
    5. Qiang Gong & Jie Shuai & Huanxing Yang, 2023. "Informational correlation and selective disclosure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(2), pages 645-683, August.
    6. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    7. Viral V. Acharya & Peter DeMarzo & Ilan Kremer, 2011. "Endogenous Information Flows and the Clustering of Announcements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 2955-2979, December.
    8. Thomas C. Chiang & Jiandong Li, 2012. "Stock Returns and Risk: Evidence from Quantile," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-39, December.
    9. Jeremy Bertomeu & Davide Cianciaruso, 2018. "Verifiable disclosure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(4), pages 1011-1044, June.
    10. Turan Bali & Kamil Yilmaz, 2009. "The Intertemporal Relation between Expected Return and Risk on Currency," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 0909, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum, revised Nov 2009.
    11. Elizabeth Blankespoor & Bradley E. Hendricks & Joseph Piotroski & Christina Synn, 2022. "Real-time revenue and firm disclosure," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 1079-1116, September.
    12. Peter F. Christoffersen & Francis X. Diebold, 2006. "Financial Asset Returns, Direction-of-Change Forecasting, and Volatility Dynamics," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(8), pages 1273-1287, August.
    13. Juan Carlos Escanciano & Juan Carlos Pardo-Fernández & Ingrid Van Keilegom, 2017. "Semiparametric Estimation of Risk–Return Relationships," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 40-52, January.
    14. Osman Kilic & Joseph M. Marks & Kiseok Nam, 2022. "Predictable asset price dynamics, risk-return tradeoff, and investor behavior," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 749-791, August.
    15. Jia, Yun & Yang, Chunpeng, 2017. "Disagreement and the risk-return relation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 97-104.
    16. Yao, Jing & Yang, Yiwen, 2023. "Risk-return tradeoff and serial correlation in the Chinese stock market: A bailout-driven crash feedback hypothesis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    17. Seo, Hojun, 2021. "Peer effects in corporate disclosure decisions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1).
    18. Chen, Shuping & Matsumoto, Dawn & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2011. "Is silence golden? An empirical analysis of firms that stop giving quarterly earnings guidance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 134-150, February.
    19. Bai, Jennie & Bali, Turan G. & Wen, Quan, 2021. "Is there a risk-return tradeoff in the corporate bond market? Time-series and cross-sectional evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1017-1037.
    20. Chen, Shuping & Matsumoto, Dawn & Rajgopal, Shiva, 2011. "Is silence golden? An empirical analysis of firms that stop giving quarterly earnings guidance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 134-150.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Voluntary disclosure; Evolving information; Dynamic disclosure; Communication; Price drop; Return skewness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:140:y:2021:i:1:p:21-53. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.