The Impact Of Costly Information Interpretation On Firm Disclosure Decisions

This paper examines how investor ability or sophistication in interpreting accounting information affects firm disclosure decisions. Investor capability in acquiring and processing information is an important issue to the accounting profession in the light of accounting regulators' perceived mandate to protect small, less sophisticated investors.1 Accounting regulation, however, is not the focus of the paper. The objective is to determine whether less sophisticated investors prefer the availability of more (or better quality) information useful for trading in a securities market. Availability of information is established as the result of a managerial decision to release information about the value of a firm intended to benefit all investors. Thus, if investors benefit from trading without information, then no information is disclosed. In contrast, when information is valuable, it is made available to all investors who, limited by their resources or ability to interpret the information, independently decide how much of the information they are able to use. Both the