We examine gender usage in a sample of 89,195 annual reports filed with the SEC during 1996-2013. We find that, after adjusting for other effects, annual reports by younger firms use proportionally more female-linked words than documents created by older, more mature companies. This finding...

Textual analysis, implemented at scale, has become an important addition to the methodological toolbox of finance. In this review, given the proliferation of papers now using this method, we first provide an updated survey of the literature while focusing on a few broad topics—social media,...

Public companies in the United States are required to file annual reports (i.e., Form 10-K) and disclose, among other things, the risk factors that may harm their stock price. The risk of a pandemic was well-known before the recent crisis, and we now know that the initial impact on many...

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>