Stacey Vanek-Smith

But Salman Arif thinks that would be a mistake.

He's an economist at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.

He says if you require companies to report less often, it puts mom and pop investors at a big disadvantage.

Big financial institutions and investment firms actually do this.

They use satellite photos to track the number of cars in store parking lots and help estimate sales.

Oil analysts have even been known to measure the shadows on oil storage tanks.

The tanks have floating roofs, and the size of the shadows can help analysts figure out how much oil is in the storage tanks, and that can help reveal a country's oil reserves.

Arif says the less official data a company puts out, the more valuable this kind of shadow measuring becomes.

And the bigger a leg up, the shadow measurers have.

And of course, he says, companies want privacy, but investors want transparency.

I mean, four times a year.

I want to know how my kid's doing, and if there's an issue, I want to be able to intervene.

Lots of transparency makes investors feel safe.

RF says quarterly reporting is part of why U.S.

markets are the biggest in the world.

Lose it, and RF says investors might start jumping at shadows, and U.S.

markets could lose their edge.

In New York, I'm Stacey Banik-Smith for Marketplace.

And that's been coming down fairly steadily.

What employers pay for health insurance is hitting a level that we haven't seen in 20 years.