Segment Disclosures, Proprietary Costs, and the Market for Corporate Control*

摘要: Recent studies provide evidence that the new segment reporting rule, SFAS 131, induced companies to more disaggregated information. We use adoption of standard identify firms aggregated information under old standard, 14, and examine two motives for managers aggregate First, withholding proprietary and, second, avoiding external scrutiny from market corporate control. find increased their disclosure on 131 (i.e., data 14) had higher abnormal profitability operations with divergent performance. do not, however, a significant decline in profits these after suggesting concerns would result competitive harm were unwarranted. also document negative association between aggregating probability takeover activities pre-SFAS period. Firms are forced face likelihood post-SFAS These results suggest generated by facilitates