Complex Disclosure

Ginger Zhe Jin, Michael Luca and Daniel Martin

No 24675, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We present evidence that unnecessarily complex disclosure can result from strategic incentives to shroud information. In our lab experiment, senders are required to report their private information truthfully, but can choose how complex to make their reports. We find that senders use complex disclosure over half the time. This obfuscation is profitable because receivers make systematic mistakes in assessing complex reports. Regression and structural analysis suggest that these mistakes could be driven by receivers who are naive about the strategic use of complexity or overconfident about their ability to process complex information.

JEL-codes: D8 D91 K2 L15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-reg
Note: IO
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published as Ginger Zhe Jin & Michael Luca & Daniel Martin, 2022. "Complex Disclosure," Management Science, vol 68(5), pages 3236-3261.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24675.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Complex Disclosure (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:24675

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24675

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().