We show that financial reporting spurs consumer behavior. Using granular GPS data, we show that foot-traffic to firms’ commerce locations significantly increases in the days following their earnings announcements. Foot-traffic increases more for announcements with extreme earnings surprises,...

We examine the relation between firms’ voluntary guidance and mandatory 8K filings. We find a negative relation between guidance and 8Ks, which strengthens following the 2004 expansion of mandatory 8K requirements, consistent with firms using the disclosures as substitutes. Increases in 8Ks...

We develop a novel methodology for studying the causal impact of announcement timing. Our methodology uses firms' earnings announcements and leverages quasi-exogenous variation attributable to the specific day-of-week on which a calendar month begins. We refer to the resulting variation in...

We investigate how improvements in organizations’ internal communication technology affect their voluntary disclosure, a form of external communication. By developing a model with a headquarters manager and several divisional managers, we formalize two competing economic forces—information...