Query Issues in Continuous Reporting Systems

ABSTRACT: Investors have often made the case that more and better information will improve their decisions. Regulators have sought to answer these requests by searching for ways to make the information more readily available. A possible solution would be to move toward real time reporting. Certainly, current technology could provide an expanded set of corporate information that is more current or even continuously available. However, as the time between event and reporting of that event shrinks, several issues arise. These include the information to be disclosed, its level of detail, the time lag, and the methods available to query the information. Furthermore, information usage, information adequacy, and materiality emerge as additional concerns. These issues can benefit from learning from queries on statistical databases such as those containing U.S. census information and hospital information. Methodologies to restrict queries with the use of inference channels, inductive learning, and query history are proposed as having implications for continuous reporting.