Does Real-Time Reporting Deter Strategic Disclosures by Management? The Impact of Real-Time Reporting and Event Controllability on Disclosure Bunching

ABSTRACT:  The SEC is moving toward requiring real-time reporting. Proponents have predicted that disclosing a news event immediately after it arises could reduce information aggregation and disclosure bunching. But evidence from the theoretical literature suggests that the effect depends on whether managers can time the underlying required reporting event. Managers, for example, can time regular poison pill adoptions, but have limited ability to time in-play pill adoptions. Thus, I test whether real-time reporting deters disclosure bunching around the disclosures of regular and in-play poison pill adoptions to examine whether managers' ability to time events affects whether real-time reporting deters strategic disclosure. I find that real-time reporting does not deter disclosure bunching for regular poison pills, but does deter it for in-play pills. These results suggest that real-time reporting will reduce disclosure bunching only if managers cannot time the underlying event. JEL Classifications: M40; M...