Includes index

1. Governance by transparency -- The new power of information -- Transparency informs choice -- Transparency as missed opportunity -- A real-time experiment -- Transparency success and failure -- How the book is organized -- 2. An unlikely policy innovation -- An unplanned invention -- The struggle toward openness -- Why disclosure? -- 3. Designing transparency policies -- Improving on-the-job safety : one goal, many methods -- Disclosure to create incentives for change -- What targeted transparency policies have in common -- Standards, market incentives, or targeted transparency? -- 4. What makes transparency work? -- A complex chain reaction -- New information embedded in user decisions -- New information embedded in discloser decisions -- Obstacles : preferences, biases, and games -- How do transparency policies measure up? -- Crafting effective transparency policies -- 5. What makes transparency sustainable? -- Crisis drives financial disclosure improvements -- Sustainable policies -- The politics of disclosure -- Humble beginnings : prospects for sustainable transparency -- Two illustrations -- Shifting conditions drive changes in sustainability

"Which SUVs are most likely to roll over? What cities have the unhealthiest drinking water? Which factories are the most dangerous polluters? What cereals are most nutritious? In recent decades, governments have sought to provide answers to such critical questions through public disclosure to force manufacturers, water authorities, and others to improve their products and practices. Corporate financial disclosure, nutritional labels, and school report cards are examples of such targeted transparency policies. At best, they create a light-handed approach to governance that improves markets, enriches public disclosure, and empowers citizens. But such policies are frequently ineffective or counterproductive. Using an analysis of eighteen U.S. and international policies, Full Disclosure shows that the information provided is often incomplete, incomprehensible, or irrelevant to consumers, investors, workers, and community residents. To be successful, transparency policies must be accurate, must keep ahead of disclosers' efforts to find loopholes, and, above all, must focus on the needs of ordinary citizens."--Jacket