Call for Papers
49th Annual (2014) Journal of Accounting Research Conference - Disclosure, the Media, and Capital Markets

May 16-17, 2014, Chicago

OVERVIEW: Over the past decade, there have been enormous changes in the way information is disseminated by and about firms, as well as how information is impounded into security prices. These changes include:
- Changes in the way firms report and file information with regulatory agencies (for the SEC, for example, EDGAR filings are now available in real time and XBRL is now mandated),
- Changes in the way the media processes and disseminates information (around the clock coverage and immediate dissemination),
- The increasing use of social media as a venue for investors, companies, and others to interact,
- The increasing use of intelligent machines to process and trade on information about firms, and
- Other changes in capital markets, including the advent of high frequency trading and other innovations.

We know relatively little about how, if at all, these changes affect the way capital markets process information, how price formation occurs in these markets, how managers' disclosure policies have responded to these changes, etc. On the one hand, work in finance and accounting points to evidence of inefficiencies in information processing, including investor inattention, incomplete processing of information, etc., and documents some findings that are hard to reconcile with market efficiency. However, economic intuition suggests that "more is better," in the sense that by getting more information faster, capital market efficiency should improve. Furthermore, even though such informational changes could improve price efficiency, there is still scant research on whether such price efficiency would improve economic efficiency.

Finally, there are increasing concerns about the role of public equity markets, with the number of traded firms declining in several of the world's major capital markets, including the U.S. Some commentators point to the increasingly costly interactions that public companies have with external constituents and the capital markets, and there are claims that the cost-benefit tradeoff is increasingly tilting companies toward obtaining capital from sources other than public equity markets.

We encourage conference submissions that address any of these areas using empirical archival, empirical experimental, analytical, clinical, or other methods.

Papers selected for inclusion in the conference are published in the annual conference issue in the spring of the year following the conference, along with discussant comments. As always, inclusion of conference papers in the conference issue is subject to satisfactory resolution of issues raised in the editorial and review process.

The conference will be held on May 16-17, 2014, at the Gleacher Center of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, in downtown Chicago.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Papers should be submitted electronically through the links provided on the Journal of Accounting Research Web site at http://www.chicagobooth.edu/jar. The submission fee is $500.00. The deadline for submission of papers is January 6, 2014.