Voluntary Disclosure When Private Information and Proprietary Costs Are Jointly Determined

The RAST conference held at Stanford, December 10-11, 2020 has a special focus on the role of financial reporting and disclosure and its impact on CSR (corporate social responsibility) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) policies and actions.

Voluntary Disclosure When Private Information and Proprietary Costs Are Jointly Determined
Presented by Daniel Taylor, University of Pennsylvania with discussant Iván Marinovic
What happens to voluntary disclosure when both proprietary costs and private information increase simultaneously? Professor Daniel Taylor, from the Wharton School of Business, examines when greater private information entails greater proprietary costs of disclosure. In this setting, he discusses that the probability of voluntary disclosure is unimodal: it first increases, reaches a unique peak, then decreases. He finds support for the theoretical predictions in multiple empirical settings.