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Long-term firm gains from short-term managerial focus: Myopia and voluntary disclosures

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  • Arya, Anil
  • Ramanan, Ram N.V.

Abstract

A CEO's short horizon and associated myopic actions are typically viewed as detrimental to the firm. In contrast, studying a voluntary disclosure model wherein capital market and product market strategic considerations are in play, we show that the CEO's myopic behavior can improve a firm's long-term value. In particular, the disclosures of a long-horizon CEO are seen as being entirely focused on the firm's interests and thus as being exploitative of customers. A short-horizon CEO myopically focused on short-term stock price is less aligned with the firm and, consequently, her disclosures are more customer friendly. As a corollary, when no disclosure is forthcoming, customers are less skeptical that the myopic CEO is withholding information to exploit them. This improves customers' willingness to pay with a myopic CEO, leading to higher firm profitability. The paper also layers in compensation design to derive the optimal degree of managerial short-term focus to induce.

Suggested Citation

  • Arya, Anil & Ramanan, Ram N.V., 2024. "Long-term firm gains from short-term managerial focus: Myopia and voluntary disclosures," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jaecon:v:77:y:2024:i:2:s0165410123000708
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jacceco.2023.101646
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Compensation design; Customer purchases; Managerial myopia; Voluntary disclosures;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • M40 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - General

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