Calling for transparency: Evidence from a field experiment*

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wong, T. J.; Yu, Gwen; Zhang, Shubo; Zhang, Tianyu
• 署名单位: University of Southern California; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Shanghai Jiao Tong University; The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING & ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0165-4101
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2023.101604
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: Customer concentration; information-content; market liquidity; Social media; disclosure; determinants; environment; cost

摘要

We examine how firms respond to requests for enhanced disclosure that we make on an online investor platform. Exploiting variation in firms' customer and supplier disclosures, we ask a randomized set of non -disclosing firms to provide information on their customers' and suppliers' identities. We find that the firms' probability of disclosure depends on the basis we give for the demanddrequests appealing to disclosure's usefulness to investors lead to more frequent disclosure, while those appealing to regulators' preference for disclosure lead to less frequent disclosure. The requests we make on the platform lead to more frequent customer- and supplier -related inquiries from other platform users. We also find that the treatment firms' disclosure of customer and supplier information improves in the next period's regulatory filings. The findings suggest that investor platforms can enhance corporate transparency by increasing retail investors' ability to demand information. (c) 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.