This paper examines the information content of the forward-looking statements in the Management Discussion and Analysis section (MD&A) of 10-K and 10-Q filings using a Naive Bayesian machine learning algorithm. I find that firms with better current performance, lower accruals, smaller size,...

We examine the relationship between analyst research and corporate earnings announcements to explore the relative importance of information discovery versus interpretation of previously released information. Using equity market reaction to capture information content, we find that information...

This study examines how the quality of corporate disclosures impacts the precision of information that financial analysts incorporate into their forecasts of upcoming annual earnings. Our empirical measures distinguish between the precision of individual analysts' common and idiosyncratic...

This study examines how the quality of corporate disclosures impacts the precision of information that financial analysts incorporate into their forecasts of annual earnings. Our empirical measures distinguish between individual analysts' common and idiosyncratic (uniquely private) information...

Investors, regulators, academics, and researchers all emphasize the importance of financial statement comparability. However, an empirical construct of comparability is typically not specified. In addition, little evidence exists on the benefits of comparability to users. This study attempts to...

This article offers a survey of theoretical research on disclosure and the cost of capital. We summarize the current state of the literature and discuss the channels through which information affects the cost of capital. After giving an overview of asset pricing theory, we examine the rationale...

We investigate whether clear disclosure of comprehensive income (CI) facilitates detection of earnings management by buy-side financial analysts and predictably affects their security price judgments. Because analysts and investors often must sort through voluminous footnotes and non-financial...

One consequence of the shift to fair value measurement is the emergence of voluntary disclosures in audited financial statements that question the reliability of mandated fair value information. We refer to these disclosures as reliability disavowals and address three questions: Are fair value...

We analyze a sample of 330 firms making unaudited disclosures required by Section 302 and 383 firms making audited disclosures required by Section 404 of the Sarbanes - Oxley Act. We find that Section 302 disclosures are associated with negative announcement abnormal returns of -1.8 percent, and...

This study develops, implements, and evaluates a multi-label text classification algorithm that extracts textual information from the annual reports of all publicly listed USA companies. Specifically, the proposed system can automatically identify 25 types of frequently mentioned risk factors in...