Making a Market for Corporate Disclosure

Abstract

It has long been said that market forces alone will result in a problematic under-sharing of information by public companies. Since the 1930s, the main regulatory response to this market failure has come in the form of the massive mandatory-disclosure regime that sits at the foundation of modern securities law. But this regime--especially when viewed along with its speech-chilling antifraud overlay-no doubt leaves society without all the corporate information from which it would benefit. The typical fix offered to the problem has been more of the same: add to the 100-plus-page list of what firms must disclose, often based on the latest Washington fad.