Despite the prevalence and importance of humor in interpersonal communication, the disclosure literature is silent on the use of humor in the context of corporate communications. We examine analysts' and managers' use of humor during public earnings conference calls. Using a sample of nearly...

We use machine learning methods to create a comprehensive measure of credit risk based on qualitative information disclosed in conference calls and in management's discussion and analysis section of the 10- K. In out-of-sample tests, we find that our measure improves our ability to predict...

Managers face conflicting incentives when making voluntary tax disclosure decisions. Although voluntary tax disclosures can improve firms' information environments and reduce financial statement users' costs of processing complex tax information, they can also inform tax authorities about...

Given the lack of diversity among senior executives of U.S. public companies, we investigate whether ethnic minority analysts face unique barriers to management access. We find managers are less likely to select minority analysts to participate in the Q&A session of public earnings conference...

This study develops an ex-ante measure of the likelihood of future corporate income tax settlements using qualitative (i.e., language) and quantitative information (i.e., firm fundamentals) from the Form 10-K. We find that both qualitative and quantitative information are incrementally useful in...

Prior research acknowledges that the determinants, timeliness, and economic implications of banks' provisions for loan losses (PLL) vary across loan types. However, the lack of machine-readable data on PLL by loan type has precluded researchers from incorporating loan type into the evaluation of...

We examine how the co-location of firms in the same industry affects analysts' cost of gathering and processing information. We find that when the firms in an analyst's portfolio are located farther away from other firms in the same industry, the analyst's portfolio size is smaller and average...