This study examines the relation between narrative risk disclosures in mandatory reports and the pricing of credit risk. In particular, we investigate whether and how the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) mandate of risk factor disclosures ( RFD s) affects credit default swap ( CDS ) spreads. Based on the theory of Duffie and Lando (2001), we predict and find that CDS spreads decrease significantly after RFD s are made available in 10‐K/10‐Q filings. These results suggest that RFD s improve information transparency about the firm's underlying risk, thereby reducing the information risk premium in CDS spreads. The content analysis further reveals that disclosures pertinent to financial and idiosyncratic risk are especially relevant to credit investors. In cross‐sectional analyses, we document that RFD s are more useful for evaluating the business prospects and default risk of firms with greater information uncertainty/asymmetry. Overall, our findings imply that the SEC requirement for adding a risk factor section to periodic reports enhances the transparency of firm risk and facilitates credit investors in evaluating the credit quality of the firm.

Speakers of weak future‐time reference (FTR) languages perceive the future as closer and more imminent. In this study, we examine the important question of whether the FTR properties of languages spoken by investors affect their demand for forward‐looking information, thereby influencing corporate management forecast practices in different countries. We predict that investors who speak weak‐FTR languages are more concerned about the future prospects of their investments and the ability of company management to respond to future changes, leading to a greater demand for management forecasts from these companies. We find that firms in weak‐FTR language countries exhibit a greater propensity for and frequency of issuing management forecasts and that they also issue more long‐horizon forecasts, compared to those in strong‐FTR language countries. Our results hold after controlling for other country‐level cultural factors. Within the same countries, firms with more foreign institutional ownership from weak‐FTR countries issue more (long‐horizon) management forecasts than their counterparts. Finally, firms from strong‐FTR countries significantly increase their issuance of (long‐horizon) management forecasts, after cross‐listing their stocks in Germany, a weak‐FTR country. This is the first study to examine language FTR as an antecedent to voluntary disclosures. We document a linguistic trait as a novel investor environment factor that shapes corporate voluntary disclosures and explains the cross‐country variations in management forecast practices.