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Proprietary Costs and the Disclosure of Information About Customers
Author(s) -
ELLIS JESSE A.,
FEE C. EDWARD,
THOMAS SHAWN E.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of accounting research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.767
H-Index - 141
eISSN - 1475-679X
pISSN - 0021-8456
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-679x.2012.00441.x
Subject(s) - competitor analysis , business , information asymmetry , set (abstract data type) , private information retrieval , marketing , industrial organization , finance , computer science , computer security , programming language
In deciding how much information about their firms’ customers to disclose, managers face a trade off between the benefits of reducing information asymmetry with capital market participants and the costs of aiding competitors by revealing proprietary information. This paper investigates the determinants of managers’ choices to disclose information about their firms’ customers using a comprehensive data set of customer‐information disclosures over the period 1976–2006. We find robust evidence in support of the hypothesis that proprietary costs are an important factor in firms’ disclosure choices regarding information about large customers.