We investigate how high-profile accounting frauds affect peer firms' investment. We document that peers react to the fraudulent reports by increasing investment during fraud periods. We show that this finding is not driven by frauds that have a higher ex ante likelihood of detection or by an association between fraud and investment booms. In addition, we find that peers’ investments increase in fraudulent earnings overstatements, and in industries with higher investor sentiment, lower cost of capital and higher private benefits of control. We also find evidence consistent with equity analysts potentially facilitating the spillover effect.

ABSTRACT We examine the commitment effect provided by mandatory disclosure and the information effect of voluntary disclosure on market illiquidity by exploring a regulatory change that allows smaller reporting companies to reduce the disclosure of certain information in their SEC filings. This regime change allows us to separate the commitment effect provided by mandatory disclosure from the information effect of voluntary disclosure. We find that firms that are eligible to reduce their disclosure, but voluntarily maintain their disclosure level, experience an increase in market illiquidity. We also find that the increase in illiquidity is more pronounced for firms with higher agency costs. These findings suggest that mandatory disclosure serves as a credible commitment mechanism and that losing such commitment by disclosure deregulation is costly in the absence of a loss of information. Our study suggests that while voluntary disclosure is effective in reducing information asymmetry, it cannot replace mandatory disclosure in addressing information problems. Data Availability: Data are available from sources identified in the text.