In this paper we investigate a firm's decision to redact proprietary information from its material contract filings. Information redaction results when the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) grants a firm's request to withhold information from investors in its material contract filings, presumably because the information is proprietary. We hypothesize that when firms redact information, measures of adverse selection deteriorate. That is, the redaction of proprietary information from material contracts should be associated with: a larger adverse selection component of the bid‐ask spread, reductions in market depth, and lower market turnover. In addition, we conjecture that the decision to redact depends on whether the firm plans on raising capital, the competitiveness of the firm's industry, and the performance of the firm. Overall the results of our analysis generally support our predictions. We find that when firms redact information, contemporaneous measures of the adverse selection component of the bid‐ask spread rise, and market depth and share turnover deteriorate; this suggests an increase in adverse selection. We also find firms are less likely to redact when they issue long‐term debt and are more likely to redact when they are in a competitive industry or experience losses.

Stanley Baiman, Robert E. Verrecchia, The Relation Among Capital Markets, Financial Disclosure, Production Efficiency, and Insider Trading, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 1-22

Public announcement, Preannouncements of information, Private information, Price reaction

Stephan E. Sefcik, Rex Thompson, An Approach to Statistical Inference in Cross-Sectional Models with Security Abnormal Returns As Dependent Variable, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 316-334

Forecasting, Interim reports, Annual reports, EPS

Robert E. Hoskin, John S. Hughes, William E. Ricks, Evidence on the Incremental Information Content of Additional Firm Disclosures Made Concurrently with Earnings, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 24, Studies on Alternative Measures of Accounting Income (1986), pp. 1-32

This paper provides descriptive data on standard sources of analyst forecasts used in accounting research: the Value Line Investment Survey, the Institutional Brokers Estimate System (IBES), and, toa lesser extent, the Standard & Poor's Earnings Forecaster and Zacks Investment Research. We examine the relative accuracy of seven forecast error metrics, using various combinations of Value Line and IBES forecasts of quarterly earnings per share (EPS) and actual earnings as reported by Value Line, IBES, and Compustat. (Appendix A reports the relative accuracy of a forecast error metric based on a smaller sample of Standard and Poor's forecasts of annual EPS). We find the forecast error metric that pairs the Value Line forecast EPS with the Value Line actual EPS produces the smallest absolute forecast errors. We also test the association of these forecast error metrics with threeday excess returns centered on the data of a quarterly earnings announcement. The strongest associations are obtained with the use of Value Line actual earnings and either Value Line or IBES forecast data. This suggests that the choice of actual EPS data is more crucial than the source of forecast EPS data. Our overall conclusion is that Value Line

In this paper we report the results of experimental markets designed to test a disclosure model based on the models of Dye [1985] and Jung and Kwon [1988]. These authors show that when receivers of information do not know whether senders possess private information, the senders will not fully disclose their private information. Their models were motivated by the discrepancy between the theoretical predictions for voluntary disclosures and empirical results. In the theoretical area, Grossman [1981] and Milgrom [1981] predicted that private information will be fully disclosed when disclosures are credible and receivers know the holder has private information; agents disclose to identify themselves as not possessing the worst possible information. Watts [1977] argued that voluntary disclosure will occur because of market pressures and the threat of regulatory intervention. Beaver [1977; 1988] described how auditing and legal liability may induce full disclosure. Nevertheless, empirical research indicates full disclosure is not always observed (e.g., Penman [1980] and Seligman [1986]).

In this study, we explore a view of expertise in which specific experiences and training create knowledge, and knowledge is combined with innate ability to perform specific audit tasks. Specifically, we test the extent to which we can explain cross-sectional variation in auditors' performance in several audit tasks using various types of knowledge and ability measures that have been identified in the psychology literature as important determinants of auditor expertise. We compare these results to the explanatory power of a simple measure of general audit experience. Our results indicate that, although more experienced auditors outperform less experienced auditors on average (and given our performance criteria), knowledge and innate ability provide a better explanation of variation in performance. Part of the motivation for this paper is to distinguish between general and expertise in the performance of information-processing tasks. Early studies of human information processing in accounting examined the effect of on performance in audit tasks (see, for example, Ashton and Brown [1980], Hamilton and Wright [1982], and Messier [1983]). Implicit in this research is the notion that . . a primary determinant of improved expertise ... is experience (Hamilton and Wright [1982, p. 757]). The reasoning behind this notion is that knowledge can be gained through and many audit tasks are knowl-

Robert W. Holthausen, Robert E. Verrecchia, The Effect of Sequential Information Releases on the Variance of Price Changes in an Intertemporal Multi-Asset Market, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 82-106