This paper examines how low financial reporting frequency affects investors' reliance on alternative sources of earnings information. We find that the returns of semi-annual earnings announcers (i.e., low reporting frequency stocks [LRF]) are almost twice as sensitive to the earnings announcement returns of U.S. industry bellwether peers for non-reporting periods compared to reporting periods. Strikingly, these heightened spillovers are followed by return reversals when investors finally observe own-firm earnings at the subsequent semi-annual earnings announcement. This indicates that investors periodically overreact to peer-firm earnings news in the absence of own-firm earnings disclosures in interim periods. We also find elevated price volatility and trading volume around earnings announcements for non-reporting periods, consistent with theories of investor overconfidence. Collectively, our results suggest that investors are unable to successfully offset the information loss arising from low reporting frequency, thus impairing their ability to value firms and adversely affecting the quality of financial markets. JEL Classifications: M41; M48; G14. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

This study provides evidence of a directly observable and significant cost of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption, by examining the fees incurred by firms for the statutory audit of their financial statements at the time of transition. Using a comprehensive dataset of all publicly traded Australian companies, we quantify an economy-wide increase in the mean level of audit costs of 23 percent in the year of IFRS transition. We estimate an abnormal IFRS-related increase in audit costs in excess of 8 percent, beyond the normal yearly fee increases in the pre-IFRS period. Further analysis provides evidence that small firms incur disproportionately higher IFRS-related audit fees. We then survey auditors to construct a firm-specific measure of IFRS audit complexity. Empirical findings suggest that firms with greater exposure to audit complexity exhibit greater increases in compliance costs for the transition to IFRS. Given the renewed debate about whether the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should mandate IFRS for U.S. firms, our results are of timely importance. Data Availability: Data are publicly available from the sources identified in the paper. Survey response data are available from the authors upon request.

U.S. stocks have been shown to earn higher returns during earnings announcement months than during non-announcement months. We document that this earnings announcement premium exists across the globe. Moreover, it is not isolated to a few countries. Of the 20 countries with enough data to conduct a within-country analysis, nine exhibit a significantly positive premium. A cross-country analysis finds that the premium is strongest in countries with the greatest increase in idiosyncratic volatility around the time of their firms' earnings announcements, suggesting that uncertainty over the earnings information to be disclosed is a primary driver of the global announcement premium.

We study the economic consequences of mandates that require bank auditors to report to bank regulators. Based on survey responses from the European Central Bank, all 28 national bank regulators within the European Union, and a review of national banking regulations, we create a novel dataset on these mandates. Exploiting the cross-sectional and time-series variation in these mandates, we find evidence that auditor reporting to bank regulators reduces bank riskiness, as measured by counterparty risk and credit spreads. We also observe a decline in problem loans and risk-weighted assets, as well as improvements in timeliness of loan loss provisions. Additional analyses suggest that mandated auditor reporting increases the effectiveness of supervisory and monitoring efforts and improves market discipline of banks. However, mandated auditor reporting comes with costs: it reduces future lending growth, risky lending, and profitability, and increases audit fees paid by shareholders.

Using an international sample of 2,113 initial coin offerings (ICOs), we explore the role of disclosure and information intermediaries in the unregulated crypto‐tokens market. First, we document substantial cross‐sectional variation in the voluntary disclosure practices of ventures seeking to raise capital through ICOs, such as the extent of information released in a prospectus‐type document called a white paper; releasing the technical source code; and communicating through social media platforms. Second, we find that, even with limited disclosure verifiability, ventures with higher levels of disclosure have a greater ability to raise capital. Finally, we find that this association is stronger in the presence of mechanisms that lend credibility to ventures’ voluntary disclosures, such as internal governance practices or external scrutiny from information intermediaries. Overall, our results suggest that voluntary disclosure and information intermediaries facilitate the functioning of ICOs as an alternative capital market.