In October 1998, the SEC implemented a rule requiring firms to use plain English in their prospectus filings. In addition to the rule, the SEC encouraged the use of plain English in all filings and communication with shareholders. Did the SEC rule significantly impact managers’ disclosure...

Form S-1 is the first SEC filing in the initial public offering (IPO) process. The tone of the S-1, in terms of its definitiveness in characterizing the firm’s business strategy and operations, should affect investors’ ability to value the IPO. We find that IPOs with high levels of uncertain...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>Defining and measuring readability in the context of financial disclosures becomes important with the increasing use of textual analysis and the Securities and Exchange Commission's plain English initiative. We propose defining readability as the effective communication of...</p>

This paper examines estimation issues associated with multivariate tests of asset pricing. Two issues are considered: (1) the constraint that the sample size (<italic>N</italic>) must be less than the time series (<italic>T</italic>), and (2) the relative effect on power of using the multivariate statistic versus a univariate...