Marking to Market and Inefficient Investment Decisions
研究了按市值计价会计如何影响有声誉顾虑的经理人的投资决策，发现市场价格的参考作用可能使经理人回避暴露私人信息的投资，导致低效决策。
We examine how mark-to-market accounting affects the investment decisions of managers with reputation concerns. Reporting the current market value of a firm’s assets can help mitigate agency problems because it provides outsiders (e.g., shareholders) with new information against which the management’s decisions can be evaluated. However, the fact that the assets’ market value is informative can also have a negative side effect: managers may shy away from investments that indicate conflicting private information and would damage their reputation. This effect can lead to inefficient investment decisions and make marking to market less desirable when market prices are more informative. The Internet appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2696 . This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.