An age-old question in the world of securities disclosure is whether there is value in mandating that issuers disclose key pieces of information about themselves to the investing public or whether these issuers will voluntarily disclose the optimal amount of information as a function of reputational pressures. Many academic articles have been written about this topic, and different regulatory systems around the world take starkly different positions on the question. Yet, there is no clear answer to the core question of whether issuers will voluntarily disclose useful information that only they know to investors at key times (eg when investors are being asked to buy securities) or whether a mandatory system with penalties and monitoring is necessary to induce this disclosure. The current COVID-19 pandemic may present an opportunity to examine this question in the sovereign issuer context. As a result of a strange confluence of factors, there seems to little negative effect of this global pandemic on the international sovereign debt market. If anything, this market is booming more than ever with countries across the range ratings quality being able to borrow billions of dollars at rates comparable to preCOVID times. Important for purposes of the question we have raised, each and every one of these countries has been impacted by the pandemic differently. And, more important, each of these countries is taking different steps to tackle the crisis and has information as to what is going on at the local level that global investors likely know little about. One might ask therefore: are we seeing these different issuers, who the market has been showering with billions of dollars in lending, disclose the kind of detailed information as to their responses to the pandemic and how they are going to get out from under it that investors would like to have? For sovereigns, there is no mandatory requirement that they disclose anything on the matter of pandemic responses, so what we are talking about is their voluntary disclosure. Let us take the example of Brazil. It issued $3.5 billion in sovereign bonds in the international markets a few weeks ago. That Brazil was able to place such a large issuance in the context of the pandemic is particularly noteworthy since its government’s response to the pandemic is widely considered to be among the most disastrous in the world. One might think though that perhaps, in order to persuade investors to give it these billions, Brazil’s leading public health expert will have prepared detailed explanations for how and why the

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自愿性 COVID-19 证券披露的价值——零？

证券披露领域的一个古老问题是，强制发行人向投资公众披露有关他们自己的关键信息是否有价值，或者这些发行人是否会根据声誉压力自愿披露最佳信息量。关于这个主题已经写了很多学术文章，世界各地的不同监管系统在这个问题上采取了截然不同的立场。然而，对于发行人是否会在关键时刻（例如，当投资者被要求购买证券时）自愿向投资者披露只有他们知道的有用信息，或者是否需要一个带有惩罚和监控的强制性系统，对于核心问题没有明确的答案。诱导这种披露。当前的 COVID-19 大流行可能为在主权发行人的背景下研究这个问题提供了机会。由于各种因素的奇怪汇合，这场全球大流行对国际主权债务市场的负面影响似乎很小。如果有的话，这个市场比以往任何时候都更加繁荣，评级质量范围内的国家能够以与疫情前时期相当的利率借入数十亿美元。就我们提出的问题而言，这些国家中的每一个都受到了大流行的不同影响，这一点很重要。而且，更重要的是，这些国家中的每一个都在采取不同的步骤来应对危机，并且掌握了全球投资者可能知之甚少的地方层面正在发生的事情的信息。因此，有人可能会问：我们是否看到了这些不同的发行人，市场一直在向谁提供数十亿美元的贷款，披露有关他们对大流行的反应的详细信息，以及他们将如何摆脱投资者想要的大流行？对于主权国家，没有强制性要求他们披露有关大流行应对问题的任何内容，因此我们谈论的是他们的自愿披露。让我们以巴西为例。几周前，它在国际市场上发行了 35 亿美元的主权债券。巴西能够在大流行的背景下发行如此大的债券尤其值得注意，因为其政府对大流行的反应被广泛认为是世界上最灾难性的。人们可能会认为，也许为了说服投资者投入这些数十亿美元，