Credibility of Voluntary Disclosure

I examine the credibility of a manager's disclosure of privately observed nonverifiable information to an investor in a repeated cheap-talk game setting. In the single-period game no communication occurs. In the repeated game, however, the manager almost always truthfully reveals his private information provided the manager is sufficiently patient, the accounting report is sufficiently useful for assessing the truthfulness of the manager's voluntary disclosure, and the manager's disclosure performance is evaluated over a sufficiently long period. These factors may explain a manager's propensity to release private information to investors.