Strategic Withholding and Imprecision in Asset Measurement

Abstract

Does managing the production of information add value in economic environments where a manager may claim to be uninformed and withhold unfavorable news? We examine this question by nesting an optimal persuasion mechanism, controlling how evidence is organized, within a voluntary disclosure framework. Information has productive consequences because the firm uses it to make a continuous operating decision. The optimal reporting strategy features coarse information at the most unfavorable reported event if and only if the firm bears penalties for nondisclosure or positive disclosure costs. The model demonstrates the optimality of imprecise information over bad news in a voluntary disclosure environment, and that such imprecision increases the quality of public signals after considering strategic disclosure effects.