Scholars have long suspected that people behave differently when their actions will be observed by or revealed to others. We hypothesize that financial reporting that reveals managers' actions will lead managers to take actions that better align with investor interests. We test this hypothesis with an experiment in which we manipulate the availability of a financial report that reveals managerial actions. Our evidence shows that financial reporting leads a manager to choose reinvestment and resource-sharing actions that better align with investor interests, even when the investor can impose no cost or confer no reward on the manager. This effect holds when the investor can shut down the firm and take a sizable portion of the assets. Our evidence suggests that financial reporting's economic value comes not only from its traditional contracting function, but also because managers care about investors' moral evaluations of them that are enabled by reporting.

长期以来，学者们一直怀疑，当人们的行为被他人观察或透露给他人时，他们的行为会有所不同。我们假设，揭示管理者行为的财务报告将引导管理者采取更符合投资者利益的行动。我们通过一个实验来检验这一假设，在该实验中，我们操纵了揭示管理行为的财务报告的可用性。我们的证据表明，财务报告会导致经理选择更符合投资者利益的再投资和资源共享行动，即使投资者可以不对经理施加任何成本或奖励. 当投资者可以关闭公司并拿走相当一部分资产时，这种效果就会成立。我们的证据表明，财务报告的经济价值不仅来自其传统的合同功能，还因为管理人员关心投资者通过报告对其进行的道德评价。