主题：Information acquisition along the supply chain: evidence from online browsing of SEC filings

报告人：方岳 研究员

主持人：宋华盛 教授

时间：2022年4月8日（星期五）中午 12:00-13:00

地点：腾讯会议（会议ID：359-199-280）

摘要：

Efficient resource management by suppliers depends on their ability to accurately forecast their customers’ demand. The filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of a supplier’s public customers provide a rich set of information that suppliers can potentially use for this task. Therefore, using EDGAR log files and a novel procedure to track suppliers’ downloads of their customers’ SEC filings, we examine the determinants of suppliers’ choice to access their customers’ SEC filings and the impact of this choice on suppliers operational and investment efficiency. Suppliers access filings more actively when they have more operational flexibility to adjust to consumer demand, face greater competitive pressure to be efficient, and face greater capital market pressure for forward-looking disclosure about their own operations. Suppliers are selective in their choice of which customers’ filings to access. Specifically, suppliers focus their efforts on economically significant customers, newer customers, customers over which they have more bargaining power, customers with which they share greater economic links, and customers that disclose higher quality information. Suppliers that download their customers’ filings more actively benefit in the form of greater operational and investment efficiency and are more willing to make relationship-specific investments. Moreover, supplier-customer relationships tend to last longer. Overall, we demonstrate that suppliers use and benefit from financial reporting information, which adds to the growing literature on alternative uses of such information beyond the traditional capital market context. In addition, our evidence that financial accounting information promotes supply-chain efficiency demonstrates a previously undocumented channel through which financial reporting has real effects, an area of growing academic interest.