Recognition versus Disclosure of Future Loss Conditions and the Decision-Usefulness of Financial Statements
通过实验研究，发现确认（而非披露）未来损失预测会扭曲投资者的估值判断，尤其在经济增长时，加速确认损失可能导致投资者低估企业价值。
ABSTRACT We conduct an experiment to investigate the differential effect of recognizing versus disclosing reasonable and supportable forecasts of future loss conditions on investors' valuation assessments when economic fundamentals either deteriorate or improve. Our main finding is that when entities enjoy growth at constant risk, the accelerated recognition of future loss conditions can induce valuation assessments that are opposed to the entity's enhanced valuation. Supplementary analyses reveal that investors misattribute (some) expected losses to the entity's past performance and rely on unadjusted current summary earnings to assess the entity's prospects. Our findings provide insight into the cognitive processes that lead investors to incorrectly assess earnings trends and inform regulators, standard setters, investors, and preparers that the accelerated recognition of relevant and unbiased forward-looking loss estimates can impair the decision-usefulness of financial statements.