We identify covenants in commercial loan contracts that require public borrowers to periodically disclose two types of accounting-related private information to lenders: projected financial statements for future periods and monthly historical financial statements. We hypothesize and provide evidence that: (1) loan contracts include these covenants in settings where they enhance lenders’ loan contract monitoring; (2) the covenants are positively associated with the frequency of loan contract amendments; and (3) lenders trade on the borrower private information they receive in secondary loan markets. We further show that the two types of covenants have predictably different determinants and effects.

Firms measure fair values using Level 2 or 3 inputs when items do not trade in liquid markets, limiting market discipline over the measurements. We provide evidence that firms holding higher proportions of financial instruments measured at Level 2 and 3 fair values report more conditionally conservative comprehensive income attributable to fair value measurements, consistent with firms trying to mitigate investors' discounting of the measurements. We further predict and find that this conditional conservatism (1) increases with governance mechanisms that increase the strength and persistence of firms' incentives to report conservatively and (2) decreases with firms’ earnings management incentives.