Financial Reporting System Choice and Disclosure Management

We examine the efficiency implications of a manager's financial reporting system choice and disclosure management. When a manager has some private information that is not captured by a firm's financial reporting system and may manipulate the financial report at some cost, we show that the manager may not choose the most precise financial reporting system. We examine how reporting system choice varies with the precision of the manager's private information captured by the reporting system, precision of information that is not captured by the reporting system, and the manager's cost of manipulating the report. We consider the effect of reporting discretion on the efficiency with which investors allocate resources.