This paper formalizes a two-step representation of accounting measurement and uses it to formalize a general rationale for conservatism as a measurement principle. A transaction's economic substance manifests itself in characteristics of the transaction, and an accounting rule is a mapping from transaction characteristics to an accounting report. Managers who have stakes in the accounting report are able to influence transaction characteristics. Such earnings management is ex post rational for managers but ex ante inefficient. To safeguard against such ex post opportunism, the optimal ex ante accounting rule is conservative in the sense that it requires more verification of the transaction characteristics favorable to managers. Thus, this rationale for conservatism is as general as the managers' ability and incentive to inflate transaction characteristics. By opening the black box of accounting measurement, the two-step representation also formalizes some classic accounting concepts, such as relevance, reliability, verifiability, verification, and accounting-motivated transactions.

This paper examines the effects of idiosyncratic accounting information on a firm's cost of capital. By embedding a moral hazard problem into a multifirm asset‐pricing model, I show that moral hazard distorts the sharing of idiosyncratic risk but does not affect the sharing of systematic risk in the economy. A firm‐level improvement in idiosyncratic information reduces the firm's cost of capital even though it does not affect the implied cost of capital inferred from publicly traded shares. Moreover, an economy‐level improvement in idiosyncratic information reduces the risk premium for idiosyncratic risk but increases the risk premium for systematic risk, resulting in an ambiguous net effect on the firm's cost of capital. These results provide alternative explanations for the mixed empirical evidence on the relation between information quality and the cost of capital.

This paper examines the market efficiency consequences of accounting disclosure in the context of stock markets as a Keynesian beauty contest, an influential metaphor originally proposed by Keynes [1936] and recently formalized by Allen, Morris, and Shin [2006]. In such markets, public information plays an additional commonality role, biasing stock prices away from the consensus fundamental value toward public information. Despite this bias, I demonstrate that provisions of public information always drive stock prices closer to the fundamental value. Hence, as a main source of public information, accounting disclosure enhances market efficiency, and transparency should not be compromised on grounds of the Keynesian‐beauty‐contest effect.

Discrete recognition is a long-standing and ubiquitous accounting practice, but it has been widely criticized for suppressing information and inducing accounting-motivated transactions. We study a model to examine the economic consequences of shifting away from discrete recognition to a continuous measurement approach. Without manipulation, discrete recognition is less informative than the continuous approach. However, the continuous regime induces more manipulation. The equilibrium informativeness is determined by both the accounting standard and endogenous manipulation. Discrete recognition is more informative than its continuous counterpart precisely when manipulation is a severe threat. We respond to the recent call in Kothari, Ramanna, and Skinner (2010) for using positive accounting theory to explain certain long-standing accounting practices. We also discuss the model's implications for fair value accounting.

This paper investigates banks’ reporting choices in the context of bank runs. A fundamental-based run imposes market discipline on insolvent banks, but a panic-based run closes banks that could have survived with better coordination among creditors. We augment a bank-run model with the bank’s reporting choices. We show that banks with intermediate fundamentals have stronger incentive to misreport than those in the two tails. Moreover, reporting discretion reduces panic-based runs, but excessive discretion also reduces fundamental-based runs. The optimal amount of reporting discretion increases in the bank’s vulnerability to panic-based runs. Finally, a given bank’s opportunistic use of reporting discretion exerts a negative externality on other banks. Our paper answers the call by Armstrong et al. (2016) and Bushman (2016) to understand better the effects of banks’ special features on their reporting choices.

One might expect that disclosure quality improves investor welfare by reducing cost of capital. This study shows that the argument is valid only in limited circumstances. Based on a production economy with perfect competition among investors, the analysis demonstrates three points. First, cost of capital could increase with disclosure quality when new investment is sufficiently elastic. Second, there are plausible conditions under which disclosure quality reduces the welfare of current and/or new investors. Finally, cost of capital could move in opposition to the welfare of either current or new investors as disclosure quality changes.

We study the effects of mark-to-market accounting (MTM) for banks following the originate-to-distribute lending model. Banks have expertise in originating loans, but it is costly for them to retain the loans on their books. We study how the accounting measurement of the retained loans affects the banks’ origination and retention decisions. We show that, relative to historic cost accounting (HC), MTM has three consequences. First, it improves the accuracy of loan measurement ex post. Second, it forces banks to retain more risk exposure on their own books. Finally, it can reduce ex ante origination efforts and lower the average quality of loans in the economy.

We investigate investors' voluntary disclosure decisions under uncertainty about their information endowment. In our model, an investor may receive initial evidence about a target firm. Conditional on learning the initial evidence, the investor may receive additional evidence that helps them interpret the initial evidence. The investor takes a position in the firm's stock, then voluntarily discloses some or all of their findings, and finally closes their position after the disclosure. We present two main findings. First, the investor will always disclose the initial evidence, even though the market is uncertain about whether the investor possesses such evidence. Second, the investor's disclosure strategy of the additional evidence increases stock price volatility: they disclose extreme news and withhold moderate news. Due to the withholding of the additional evidence, misleading disclosure arises as an equilibrium outcome, where the investor's report decreases (increases) price despite their news being good (bad). These results remain robust when considering the target firm's endogenous response to the investor's report.

Faceless trading in a secondary stock market not only redistributes wealth among investors but also generates information that feeds back to real decisions. Using this observation we re‐evaluate the “leveling‐the‐playing‐field” rationale for disclosure to secondary stock markets. By partially preempting traders' information advantage established from information acquisition, disclosure reduces private incentives to acquire information, resulting in two opposite effects on firm value. On one hand, this narrows the information gap between informed and uninformed traders and improves liquidity of firm shares. On the other hand, this reduces the informational feedback from the stock market to real decisions. This tradeoff determines the optimal disclosure policy. The model explains why firm value can be higher in an environment that simultaneously promotes disclosure and private information production and why growth firms are endogenously more opaque than value firms.

The adoption of common accounting standards generates both a precision effect and a network effect. When firms use common standards, investors can leverage their knowledge about the standards to process more financial reports. Embedding both effects into the economic framework of Baiman and Verrecchia (1995, 1996), we study the adoption’s effects on reporting precision, firm value, and liquidity of both the switcher and the early adopter. The model helps address the identification challenge and reconcile some existing results in the empirical literature on IFRS adoption. It also generates implications for standardizing disclosure and accounting methods.