Financial reporting and disclosure are potentially important means for management
to communicate firm performance and governance to outside investors. We provide a
framework for analyzing managers’ reporting and disclosure decisions in a capital
markets setting, and identify key researchquestions. We then review current empirical
researchon disclosure regulation, information intermediaries, and the determinants and
economic consequences of corporate disclosure. Our survey concludes that current
research has generated a number of useful insights. We identify many fundamental
questions that remain unanswered, and changes in the economic environment that raise
new questions for research. r 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.