Voluntary Disclosure in Light of Control Concerns
By Anil Arya, Ram Ramanan
Contemporary Accounting Research | December 2021
DOI
doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12717
Citation
Arya, Anil., Ramanan, Ram. Voluntary Disclosure in Light of Control Concerns Contemporary Accounting Research doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12717.
Copyright
Contemporary Accounting Research, 2021
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Abstract
The centrality of private information in the design of accounting institutions has been explored via agency models that address control concerns as well as disclosure models that amplify valuation issues. This paper derives disclosures by an entrepreneur-owner when both control and valuation concerns are in play. In particular, the disclosures influence stock price not only via a direct impact on valuation of the firm's revenue but also via an indirect impact on the firm's cost of procuring inputs from a self-interested and privately informed upstream supplier. In this setting, disclosures are judiciously designed to influence the supplier's decision to share cost information and to control information rents embedded in the procurement contract within the supply chain. Specifically, in order to convey that information rents are not in the offing and, thus, motivate information sharing by the supplier, the owner has incentives to convey a less “rosy” picture. In effect, when controlling supplier actions also becomes important, the owner discloses some unfavorable revenue news that she would have otherwise withheld and conceals some favorable revenue news that she would have otherwise revealed. Consequently, in our model, the disclosure region is either two-tailed or intermediate, in contrast to the single-tailed disclosure region implied by familiar valuation considerations alone.

Ram Ramanan is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Before joining ISB, he served as a faculty member at the University of California, Davis and at SUNY, Binghamton.

Professor Ramanan’s research focuses on the role of accounting in management decisions. Specifically, he examines the incentive effects of financial reports and disclosures on various managerial decisions both inside an organisation and within supply chains. His work has been published in leading academic journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, The Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Research, Management Science, and Production and Operations Management.

At ISB Professor Ramanan teaches the core Managerial Accounting course and the elective in Strategic Performance Management.

Professor Ramanan holds a PhD in Accounting from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. He is also a Chartered Accountant.

Nv Ramanan
Ram Ramanan