Full disclosure: the perils and promise of transparency

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

6. International transparency

How do international transparency policies work?

Why now?

From private committee to public mandate : international corporate financial reporting

Improving a moribund system : international disease reporting

The limits of international transparency : labeling genetically modified foods

7. Toward collaborative transparency

Innovation at the edge

Technology expands capacities of users, disclosers, and government

Four emerging policies

Challenges to collaborative transparency

New roles for users, disclosers, and government

Looking ahead : complementary generations of transparency

8. Targeted transparency in the information age

Two possible futures

When transparency won't work

Crafting effective policies

The road ahead

Appendix : eighteen major cases

Targeted transparency in the United States

Targeted transparency in the international context.