We examine how firms respond to requests for enhanced disclosure that we make on an online investor platform. Exploiting variation in firms’ customer and supplier disclosures, we ask a randomized set of non-disclosing firms to provide information on their customers’ and suppliers’ identities. We find that the firms’ probability of disclosure depends on the basis we give for the demand—requests appealing to disclosure’s usefulness to investors lead to more frequent disclosure, while those appealing to regulators’ preference for disclosure lead to less frequent disclosure. The requests we make on the platform lead to more frequent customer- and supplier-related inquiries from other platform users. We also find that the treatment firms’ disclosure of customer and supplier information improves in the next period’s regulatory filings. The findings suggest that investor platforms can enhance corporate transparency by increasing retail investors’ ability to demand information.

我们研究了公司如何回应我们在在线投资者平台上提出的加强披露的请求。利用公司客户和供应商披露的差异，我们要求一组随机的非披露公司提供有关其客户和供应商身份的信息。我们发现，公司披露的可能性取决于我们为需求提供的基础——吸引披露对投资者有用的请求会导致更频繁的披露，而那些吸引监管者偏好披露的请求会导致披露频率降低。我们在平台上提出的要求会导致其他平台用户更频繁地询问与客户和供应商相关的问题。我们还发现，在下一期的监管文件中，处理公司对客户和供应商信息的披露有所改善。