Date of Graduation

5-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Accounting

Advisor/Mentor

Cassell, Cory

Committee Member

Raymundo, Fellipe

Second Committee Member

Crawley, Michael

Keywords

Redacted contracts; Redaction frequency; Redaction materiality; Redaction rule changes; Redactions; Regulation S-K

Abstract

U.S. public companies may redact information from material contracts in SEC filings as long as such information is not considered to be material by the SEC and when it is the type of information that the registrant treats as private and confidential. In 2021, the SEC revised redaction regulations in response to the expansion of the legal definition of ‘confidential’ by the Supreme Court of the United States. In this paper I examine whether these changes, referred to as FMI Amendments, impact companies’ decision to redact information from their material contracts filed with the SEC. In addition, I extend Thompson et al. (2023) conducted under the previous regulatory regime by using a larger sample and by incorporating a new set of observations from the FMI Amendments period. I find that there is no increase in the frequency of redactions after FMI Amendments went into effect. I also find that redaction-related insider trading frequency decreased after the FMI Amendments, while the stock price discovery measure (IPT) showed no significant change. Finally, I show that the increases in redaction and insider trading frequencies documented in Thompson et al. (2023) study are diminished when we extend the sample window to include the entire regulatory period preceding the FMI Amendments.

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