Media Competition and Information Disclosure

This paper analyzes an election game where self-interested politicians can exploit the lack of information that voters have about candidates' preferred policies in order to pursue their own agendas. In such a setup, we study the incentives of newspapers to acquire costly information, and how competition among the media affect such incentives. We show that the higher the number of potential readers and/or the lower the cost or investigating, the more the newspapers investigate. We also show that the readers' purchasing habits play a crucial role in the model. More specifically, we show that if the readers always buy a newspaper, media competition favors information disclosure; whereas if they just buy a newspaper in the case news are uncovered, competition is not so desirable.Media competition, Political accountability, Information

A Comparison of Disclosure Practice of the Activities of 3r in Japan, United Kingdom and Indonesia in the Context of Environment Regulation

Along with the increase in business competition and globalization, stakeholders not only demand a company’s financial statements to make decisions, but they also require more information such as information on environmental performance. The information incorporated in the environmental performance of the company’s business plan and strategy with the ultimate goal, that is, improving the company’s corporate value to stakeholders. This study elaborates on the differences in disclosure practices of the application of environmental performance that are the activity of 3R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) conducted in Japan, United Kingdom and Indonesia in the context of environmental regulations that exists in each country through all disclosures, that is the annual report, website and other separate report. This study used 30 data samples of listed manufacturing companies in each country. This study found that the existing environmental regulations in each country is affecting the implementation of the activities of 3R that then affects the disclosure by the company. The activities of 3R were encountered in the CSR Report, Environmental Report, SHE Report, Sustainability Report, Environmental Sustainability Report, Environmental & Social Reporting. In Japan, the level of the activities of 3R and the quality of information disclosure in the activities of 3R is the highest, followed by the UK and Indonesia. Research reveals that voluntary case will cause the hidden information that were disclosed in the media.     Keywords: environmental performance, 3R activities, disclosure, regulatio

Periodic Reporting in a Continuous World: The Correlating Evolution of Technology and Financial Reporting

The evolution of technology has drastically altered what it means to be a reporting company in the eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Technological development has also played a large role in the shifting trend from periodic reporting to continuous reporting, as is particularly apparent in the evolution of the Form 8-K. It is true that the increasingly technological world of continuous reporting does not come without disadvantages. This issue brief, however, argues that despite the increased risks and challenges of continuous reporting, its net effect on disclosure, and the investing community generally, is positive. With that benefit in mind, this paper further suggests four new amendments to the Form 8-K

Paying Positive to Go Negative: Advertisers' Competition and Media Reports

This paper analyzes a two-sided market for news where advertisers may pay a media outlet to conceal negative information about the quality of their own product (paying positive to avoid negative) and/or to disclose negative information about the quality of their competitors' products (paying positive to go negative). We show that whether advertisers have negative consequences on the accuracy of news reports or not ultimately depends on the extent of correlation among advertisers' products. Specifically, the lower the correlation among the qualities of the advertisers' products, the (weakly) higher the accuracy of the media outlet' reports. Moreover, when advertisers' products are correlated, a higher degree of competition in the market of the advertisers' products may decrease the accuracy of the media outlet's reports

Strategic Communication Games: Theory and Applications

The dissertation consists of the three essays about strategic communication games. Strategic communication games are costless sender-receiver games, and address the question of how much information can be credibly transmitted in equilibrium, and what kind of communication environments facilitate information transmission. Ch. 2, “Multidimensional Cheap Talk with Sequential Messages,” considers a multidimensional cheap talk game where there are two senders who share the private information, and send a message to the receiver sequentially. We suggest a notion of extended self-serving belief, and show that there exists a fully revealing equilibrium if and only if the senders have opposing-biased preferences. Ch. 3, “A Characterization of Equilibrium Set of Persuasion Games without Single Crossing Conditions,” considers a persuasion game between one sender and one receiver. The sender is a perfectly informed player, and any private information is completely verifiable. The receiver has binary alternatives. However, because the players\u27 preferences do not satisfy the Giovannoni-Seidmann single crossing condition, full disclosure equilibrium never exists. We characterize the set of equilibria by specifying the receiver\u27s ex ante expected utility. When mass media strategically suppress election-relevant information in order to influence public opinion, how do candidates and voters react to this media manipulation? To answer this question, Ch. 4, “Manipulated News: Electoral Competition and Mass Media,” studies a Downsian voting model including media outlets. The two candidates simultaneously announce policies, but only the media outlets observe them; the voter cannot observe. Then before voting occurs, the media outlets send news about the policies. After reading the news, the voter chooses one of the candidates. In the model with single outlet, equilibrium outcomes are distorted via the distortions in the voter\u27s and the candidates\u27 behaviors. As a result, the median voter theorem could fail

Manufacturing Barriers to Biologics Competition and Innovation

As finding breakthrough small-molecule drugs gets harder, drug companies are increasingly turning to “large molecule” biologics. Although biologics represent many of the most promising new therapies for previously intractable diseases, they are extremely expensive. Moreover, the pathway for generic-type competition set up by Congress in 2010 is unlikely to yield significant cost savings. In this Article, we provide a fresh diagnosis of, and prescription for, this major public policy problem. We argue that the key cause is pervasive trade secrecy in the complex area of biologics manufacturing. Under the current regime, this trade secrecy, combined with certain features of FDA regulation, not only creates high barriers to entry of indefinite duration but also undermines efforts to advance fundamental knowledge. In sharp contrast, offering incentives for information disclosure to originator manufacturers would leverage the existing interaction of trade secrecy and the regulatory state in a positive direction. Although trade secrecy, particularly in complex areas like biologics manufacturing, often involves tacit knowledge that is difficult to codify and thus transfer, in this case regulatory requirements that originator manufacturers submit manufacturing details have already codified the relevant tacit knowledge. Incentivizing disclosure of these regulatory submissions would not only spur competition but it would provide a rich source of information upon which additional research, including fundamental research into the science of manufacturing, could build. In addition to provide fresh diagnosis and prescription in the specific area of biologics, the Article contributes to more general scholarship on trade secrecy and tacit knowledge. Prior scholarship has neglected the extent to which regulation can turn tacit knowledge not only into codified knowledge but into precisely the type of codified knowledge that is most likely to be useful and accurate. The Article also draws a link to the literature on adaptive regulation, arguing that greater regulatory flexibility is necessary and that more fundamental knowledge should spur flexibility. A vastly shortened version of the central argument that manufacturing trade secrecy hampers biosimilar development was published at 348 Science 188 (2015), available online