Delayed Financial Disclosure: Mexico's Recent Experience

Abstract

This article documents a delay in the public release of Mexican international reserve data in the months before Mexico's debt crisis at the end of 1994. The article establishes that in that year investors did not know the level of Mexican reserves before October; yet this lack of information did not seem to reduce investor confidence in the Mexican economy. The article does not establish whether the delay in releasing reserve data was due to logistical problems or to a government strategy. The possibility that the delay was strategic is evaluated by developing an economic model that captures some of the principal constraints facing the Mexican government in 1994 and that makes explicit the conflicting objectives of the government and investors. The model shows that in such an environment with private information, strategic delay can occur in equilibrium if investors are uncertain about the cause of the delay.