Human capital is a primary source of value in modern firms, yet little is known about what employee information firms disclose and whether it is timely and informative given the SEC's flexible disclosure rules. We examine the determinants of firms' human capital disclosures by combining textual...

This paper provides a unique COVID-19 disclosure measurement and investigates the association between the level of COVID-19 disclosure and uncertainty within annual reports for UK FTSE-All share non-financial firms. We used automated textual analysis to score the sampled annual reports. The...

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird untersucht, ob und wie ausführlich in der Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung börsennotierter Elektroautomobilhersteller auf soziale Nachhaltigkeit eingegangen wird. Anhand eines selbst entwickelten Kriterienkatalogs, welcher sich an den Kernelementen des...

Using the unique scheduled disclosure system for annual reports in China's stock market, we examine within-industry herding behavior in annual report timing. The results reveal the waiting and following behavior strategies used in the annual reporting process within industry. Firms that...

Generally, companies have been faced with problem that ranges from non-disclosure to partial disclosure of intangible assets (IAs). This however, distorts the oversight function of the directors of companies from producing full and accurate financial information in the annual reports for various...

The present study aims to identify the impact of the tone of risk reporting narratives on company market value. The paper uses a sample of 34 Portuguese non-finance companies with shares traded at the Euronext Lisbon stock exchange market. The paper conducts an automated content analysis of the...

Prior literature documents a temporary spike in information asymmetry between sophisticated and unsophisticated traders around corporate disclosures because the former process new information faster. Using advances in textual analysis, we show that when management issues more ambiguous or less...

Corporate venture capital (CVC) is one of the most important avenues for corporate innovation today, yet there can be unintended consequences related to anticompetitive practices. Recent scrutiny from regulators and policymakers underscores their growing desire for more information about...

Using a large panel of U.S. public firms, we examine the relation between annual report readability and cost of equity capital. We hypothesize that complex textual reporting deters investors’ ability to process and interpret annual reports, leading to higher information risk, and thus higher...

This paper provides a unique COVID-19 disclosure measurement and investigates the association between the level of COVID-19 disclosure and uncertainty. The results show there is a positive relationship between COVID-19 disclosure and uncertainty. Firms with larger boards exhibit more significant...

Regulators and corporate governance experts all over the world consider disclosure and transparency to be fundamental conditions for properly functioning securities markets. In the U.S., rules and regulations, as well as regulatory pronouncements, place public companies under strict obligations...

We use changes in firm officers and external auditors to examine the relative influences of these parties on annual report textual disclosures. Using a sample of public companies that file XBRL-tagged financial statements with the SEC between 2011 and 2018, we find that changes in chief...

In this paper, we analyze the real effect of financial statement tax disclosures on corporate innovation activities. In 2007, the FASB enacted FIN 48, which mandates the separate and more detailed disclosure of reserves for unrecognized tax benefits (UTBs). Using patent applications as a measure...

A firm is typically characterized as competing at the country-level, facing the same level of competition regardless of the locations in which it competes. However, an average firm operates in only five out of 50 U.S. states and the intensity of rivalry varies across states. This raises an...

Causal reasoning involves understanding the cause of events that have already happened (i.e., diagnosis) as well as predicting which future events will occur (i.e., prediction). Although this type of reasoning is an important part of financial reporting and voluntary disclosure, very little...

Causal reasoning involves understanding the cause of events that have already happened (i.e., diagnosis) as well as predicting which future events will occur (i.e., prediction). Although this type of reasoning is an important part of financial reporting and voluntary disclosure, very little...

This paper investigates the level of voluntary disclosure by listed Corporations of South Pacific Stock Exchange (SPSE). The major objective of the paper is to contribute towards the literature on level of voluntary disclosure in a developing country context. The focal point of the research was...

Since 2018, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires firms to disclose the ratio of their Chief Executive Officer's (CEO's) and median employee's pay. Due to the uncertainty surrounding the ratio's interpretation, managers must weigh the costs and benefits of including (or omitting)...

This study examines whether the mandatory adoption of Integrated Reporting (IR) in South Africa improves the ease of reading of annual reports for investors. Using the coherence of text as a measure of readability of the text, I demonstrate that adoption of IR leads to an increase in the...

This paper reviews the literature on the real effects of financial reporting and disclosure on corporate innovation, highlighting both the possible channels of influence and the potential challenges that researchers face when attributing causal effects. We discuss the concept of innovation,...

This study examines the informativeness of firm disclosures related to COVID-19 in earnings conference calls and annual reports (10-K) during the first quarter of 2020 when firms face tremendous uncertainty and little regulatory guidance. We find that investors react to COVID-19 related...

We analyze the importance of policy uncertainty to textual disclosure in the U.S. over the 1996 to 2015 period. Consistent with the information-acceleration view, we find that policy uncertainty increases textual disclosure quantity evident in disclosure length. We also document that policy...

We examine short sellers' use of textual information in annual reports for shorting activities. We find that more uncertainty and negative words in annual reports are associated with greater abnormal shorting volume. Short selling motivated by textual information negatively predicts stock price...

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of financial performance on textual features of the CEO’s statement. Specifically, given the incentives of poorly performed companies engage in impression management, the study investigates whether companies’ reporting strategy hinges on its...

The objectives of this study are to determine the level of conformity between Current Issued Reports (CIRs) and Integrated Report (IR) elements of the Amman Stocks Exchange (ASE) listed companies, as well as to determine whether the investigated corporate characteristics (size, age, quality...

Objective - The business world requires that companies not only focus on management and owners, but also that they pay attention to the sustainability of the social environment. This concept is better known as Corporate Social Responsibility. The purpose of this study is to obtain empirical...

Discretionary disclosure refers to differences in the depth of disclosed items that managers can exercise in disclosing information because there are no specific requirements of the disclosure extent. This paper investigates discretionary disclosure levels in interim financial reports by...

This paper examines the economic benefits associated with textual attributes and the external assurance of integrated reporting (IR), an innovative form of corporate disclosure that connects financial and environmental, social and governance (ESG) information in a single report. We investigate...

This study examines how dimensions of culture influence variations in views about the link between corporate tax payments and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Using textual analysis and a newly-developed set of keywords unique to a tax setting, we analyze 4,438 CSR reports from 24...

This study examines the extent of compliance with accounting disclosure requirements relating to provisions for decommissioning costs by oil and gas companies. We also investigate the views of stakeholders on the reporting practices of these companies. Using a content analysis approach, our...

This paper provides an overview of purchase obligations disclosed in corporate annual filings. We discuss the details of the SEC rule that requires the disclosure of purchase obligations, describe the data collection and sample formation procedures, and show the examples of contractual...

This study investigates the sustainability disclosure effects of the introduction of the Companies Act 2006 Regulations 2013 in the United Kingdom. The regulation mandates the disclosure of information on greenhouse gas emissions, gender distribution and human rights issues. We examine two...

This paper reviews the accounting literature that studied readability of corporate narrative disclosures as a dependent variable being affected by firm performance, desire to highlight good news or hide bad news, risk exposures, among others, or as an independent variable affecting decision...

We examine firms' corporate venture capital (CVC) investing activities from a disclosure and financial reporting perspective. The CVC industry has matured to become a driving force for innovation in today's corporate landscape, yet there is very little research from accounting scholars. We...

We analyze the importance of policy uncertainty to textual disclosure in the U.S. over the 1996 to 2015 period. We find that policy uncertainty increases textual disclosure length, lowers readability, and increases the tone of uncertainty and negativity. Our strong, robust evidence implies that...

Das Institut für Organisationsökonomik (IO) an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster ist inzwischen neun Jahre alt. Der 9. Jahresbericht informiert über das neunte Jahr, d. h. über das Wintersemester 2018/2019 und das Sommersemester 2019. Wie in den Vorjahren werden das Institut...

This paper investigates the impact of annual report readability on the corporate bond market. My findings indicate that in the US corporate bond market, firms with less readable annual reports tend to have higher credit spreads, higher credit spread volatilities, higher transaction costs, higher...