In this paper, we examine how the emergence of voluntary disclosure standards can alter the nature of information available to capital market participants. Using industry-specific dictionaries of sustainability terms contained in voluntary disclosure standards developed by the Sustainability...

In this paper, we examine factors prompting companies to voluntarily adopt sustainability standards for sustainability reporting and the consequences of such voluntary commitment. Using data on firms’ voluntary adoption of sustainability standards developed by the Sustainability Accounting...

We construct an index of aggregate management optimism from managers' qualitative disclosures in annual and quarterly financial reports and show that this index varies with market-wide sentiment. First, we find that the correlation between the management optimism index and Baker and Wurgler's...

We examine changes in CEOs' disclosure styles in quarterly earnings conference calls, over their tenure. Our longitudinal analysis of newly hired CEOs shows that CEOs' forward-looking disclosures and their disclosures' relative optimism decline in their tenure. Further, externally hired and...

We survey a broad group of professionals who use financial statements as part of their job to assess the extent to which they believe financial reports suffer from disclosure overload. Consistent with the claims made by regulators, auditors, and preparers, we find that a significant portion of...

With the advent of social media, individual public opinions about firms can be more easily accessed and aggregated, and recent research suggests that various platforms, such as Twitter, Seeking Alpha, and Estimize, provide information relevant in predicting future corporate disclosures. Rather...