Shareholder litigation, management forecasts, and productive decisions during the initial public offerings

Abstract

This paper develops a model to analyze the impact of shareholder litigation on managers’ voluntary disclosure strategies in equity offerings. The major findings are as follows. First, under different economic parameters, the entrepreneur has two possible equilibrium disclosure strategies: full and partial disclosure. Of particular interest is the latter equilibrium, in which shareholder litigation can give the entrepreneur incentives to partially disclose her private information. Second, production decisions might be distorted by the entrepreneur’s disclosure incentives. The full disclosure equilibrium is associated with underinvestment, while overinvestment exists in the partial disclosure equilibrium. The model is then used to examine the effect of regulatory polices on firms’ disclosure incentives. It shows that relaxing the legal liability can result in more information flow to the public. However, it also leads to a higher rate of lawsuits and an increase in deadweight litigation costs.