Theories of delegated monitoring predict that when public disclosure is costly, monitoring by a large investor leads management to supply more private information to that investor, and less public disclosure to other similarly aligned investors who free-ride off the monitor. We test this prediction in the setting where large shareholders contractually bind management to share private information. We find that after the execution of such contracts, firms improve their performance and reduce their public disclosures. Overall, our evidence supports the disclosure prediction of delegated monitoring theories, and is inconsistent with poor-performance and expropriation theories of disclosure.

委托监督理论预测，当公开披露成本高昂时，大型投资者的监督会导致管理层向该投资者提供更多的私人信息，而较少向其他类似的搭便车的投资者公开披露。我们在大股东通过合同约束管理层共享私人信息的情况下测试了这一预测。我们发现，在执行此类合同后，公司提高了绩效并减少了公开披露。总体而言，我们的证据支持委托监控理论的披露预测，与绩效不佳和征用的披露理论不一致。