Psychological evidence indicates that it is hard to process multiple stimuli and perform multiple tasks at the same time. This paper tests the investor distraction hypothesis, which holds that the arrival of extraneous news causes trading and market prices to react sluggishly to relevant news...

We analyze management's emphasis (i.e., prominence, frequency, and textual highlighting) of GAAP metrics within the narrative portion of earnings announcement press releases; we assess whether management uses emphasis opportunistically, informatively, or both. We find that management emphasizes...

We define a delayed disclosure ratio (DD) as the fraction of 10-Q financial statement items that are withheld at the earlier quarterly earnings announcement. We find that higher DD firms have a greater delay in investor and analyst response to earnings surprises: (i) the fraction of total market...

We model limited attention as incomplete usage of publicly available information. Informed players decide whether or not to disclose to observers who sometimes neglect either disclosed signals or the implications of non-disclosure. In equilibrium observers are unrealistically optimistic,...

We investigate a pervasive voluntary disclosure practice -- managers including balance sheets with quarterly earnings announcements. Consistent with expectations, we find that managers voluntarily disclose balance sheets when current earnings are relatively less informative, or when future...

This paper examines the role that exchange-traded funds (ETFs) play in the transfer ofinformation across firms around earnings announcements. Our analysis focuses on the differencesin information transfer between broad-based and sector ETFs. We find that firms with sector ETFownership are...

We use trade-level data to examine the role of actively managed funds (AMFs) in earnings news dissemination. We find AMFs are drawn to, and participate disproportionately more in, earnings announcements (EAs) that include bundled managerial guidance. When the two pieces of news are directionally...

This study examines how an increase in tick size affects algorithmic trading (AT), fundamental information acquisition (FIA), and the price discovery process around earnings announcements (EAs). Leveraging the SECs randomized Tick Size Pilot experiment, we show a tick size increase results in a...

We use the Campbell (1991) return decomposition framework to reexamine the variation in the information content of earnings between profit firms and loss firms and over time. We show that current earnings surprises are more strongly correlated with the discount rate news component of returns for...

We examine the role of concurrent information in the striking increase in investor response to earnings announcements from 2001 to 2016, as measured by return variability and volume following Beaver (1968). We find management guidance, analyst forecasts, and disaggregated financial statement...