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The Information Limit to Honest Managerial Behavior

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Abstract

In the last years of the Internet bubble, many managers provided fraudulent financial statements with the aim at inflating the market value of their firms. Is this shortage of honesty an accident or a buit-in feature of shareholder capitalism? This paper argues that in an economy hosting publicly traded companies where investors have only imperfect information about a firm’s type and where a honest financial report may be wrong, at least some bad firms managers will provide false statements. Furthermore, in equilibrium some good firm managers may also resort to corrupt auditors which will issue a favorable report without carrying out any investigation. The frequency of dishonest managers is analysed in keeping with the precision of the report and the total number of firms.

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  • Besancenot, Damien & Vranceanu, Radu, 2004. "The Information Limit to Honest Managerial Behavior," ESSEC Working Papers DR 04008, ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-04008
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate fraud; Accounting information; Manager behavior; Honesty; Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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