Costs and Benefits of Business information

This article analyzes the costs and benefits of disclosures of information by profit-making enterprises. It excludes the costs and benefits of disclosure by governmental entities and private-sector, not-for-profit entities. Entirely different issues arise when disclosure must be related to the goals and effective functioning of democracy and charitable undertakings. Even when narrowed, however, the range of enterprise disclosure to be considered is enormous. It can vary from none to complete. None is a total right of privacy. Complete disclosure is a public right to see anything and everything. Some parties might benefit and others might suffer from any disciosure, though it is also true that some disclosure is immaterial in cost and in effect. The types of costs and benefits are economic, political, social, and ethical. Parties may be affected by both costs and benefits. For example, the costs of corporate disclosure are borne by owners, but they are also beneficiaries of the disclosure they pay for. Financial report users do not neatly share in costs and benefits. Although owners pay for corporate disclosure, stock market investors considering ownership are free riders who pay nothing at all. These kinds of complexities are one reason this article does not circumscribe the range of costs and benefits it considers. There is another. There are no agreed-upon measures of the dollar value of costs and benefits from disclosure. The appropriate starting place for a consideration of costs and benefits is therefore to identify their range and nature and to explore their relationships. The costs and benefits treated in this article are categorized by interests. The categories are: • The entity's interests.