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This paper argues that central bankers should raise inflation to signal their credibility to forward guidance policies. As inflation can be stabilized in normal times either because of central banker's credibility (e.g. because of reputation concerns) or because of his aversion to inflation, the private sector is unable to infer the central banker's type from observing stable inflation before a liquidity trap, jeopardizing the efficiency of forward guidance policy. We derive optimal policy in a new-Keynesian model subject to liquidity traps where agents are uncertain about the central banker's type and we show that the credible central banker can signal his type by raising inflation before a trap. We show that this signaling motive can justify level of inflation well above 2% but also that the low inflation volatility during the Great Moderation was insufficient to ensure fully efficient forward guidance when needed.

Firms sometimes obtain soft private information about growth prospects along with hard information about current or past performance. In this environment, we find that optimizing disclosures over multiple periods yields nonlinear stock price reactions following both voluntary and mandatory disclosures. Further, we derive several predictions about distinct short-run and long-run effects of disclosures and nondisclosures on security prices. Under specified conditions, when the volatility of the firm’s earnings increases, the average contemporaneous and prospective post-mandatory disclosure market premia (for voluntary disclosures over nondisclosures) rise, while farther-in-future market discounts (for such voluntary disclosures) also become larger. Our analysis moreover predicts that both the disclosure probability and the information content of nondisclosures can increase in the persistence of earnings.

While it is generally maintained that earnings management can occur to inform as well as to mislead, evidence that earnings management informs has been scarce, and evidence that credibility increases with signal costliness inexistent. We provide evidence that firms use discretion over financial reporting and real activities to report higher earnings on lower sales from continuing operations. Although these firms defy gravity artificially, we show that the upwards earnings management informs rather than misleads investors. We find that firms that defy gravity (1) report higher future earnings and cash flows, (2) earn higher one-year-ahead abnormal returns, (3) have a positive market reaction to the defying gravity earnings announcement, and (4) their CEOs are more likely to be net buyers in the year preceding the defying gravity event. We also show that the upwards earnings management signal is more credible when it is more costly to achieve: Defying gravity firms perform better when they bear the opportunity loss of not taking a big bath in times of crisis — years where poorer performance can be blamed on economy-wide shocks, and when they have fewer degrees of freedom to report higher earnings.