Mandatory information disclosure and innovation: Evidence from the disclosure of operational information

We use a quasi-natural experiment wherein the Shanghai Stock Exchange requires listed companies in certain industries to disclose operational informa-tion and a staggered difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of mandatory information disclosure on corporate innovation. We find that com-panies subject to mandatory operational information disclosure show signifi-cantly increased innovation. This effect is pronounced for companies classified as non-state-owned enterprises, facing severe financing constraints and a high degree of shareholder tunneling behavior and in competitive and high-tech industries. Although mandatory operational information disclosure reduces their competitive advantage, companies appear to compensate by increasing innovation. Our study highlights the positive impact of mandatory operational information disclosure, indicating that it contributes to the high -quality development of both capital markets and companies. (c) 2023 Sun Yat-sen University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecom-mons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).