The Value of Confession: Admitting Mistakes to Build Reputation
研究了企业为何在财务报告中公开承认错误（如重述盈利、减值商誉），发现即使不考虑法律成本，仅声誉担忧就足以激励高质量企业更频繁地忏悔，因为忏悔会引发更严格的未来审查，对低质量企业成本更高。
ABSTRACT Often, firms reveal oversights and bad decisions publicly through their financial reporting (for instance, restating earnings, impairing goodwill, etc.). These “confessions,” which usually lead to immediate reputation losses, may be attributed to attempts to be perceived as transparent or to attempts to avoid likely litigation costs. In this paper, however, we argue that reputational concerns about perceived ability alone can provide firms with strong enough incentives to confess their mistakes, even in the absence of other non-reputational disciplinary mechanisms. Analyzing the repeated interaction between a firm and an external evaluator who may detect the firm's mistakes, we show that, in equilibrium, a confession places the firm under higher future scrutiny, which is more costly for lower-quality firms. Consequently, in equilibrium, higher-quality firms confess mistakes more often.