Knowledge that Transforms

We study the economic consequences of managers’ vocal delivery quality during earnings conference calls. We introduce a novel measure, vocal delivery quality, that captures the acoustic comprehensibility of audio information for an average listener. Our measure relies on a deep-learning algorithm applied to a large sample of earnings call audio files. Consistent with predictions from the psychology and accounting literatures, we find evidence that the quality of managers’ vocal delivery deteriorates when they deliver negative news, such as a decrease in earnings or negative narrative information, and positive but transitory earnings news. We show that the stock market reacts in real time to managers’ vocal delivery quality. We also document that the vocal delivery quality has an effect on information intermediaries such as analysts and the media. Overall, our findings underscore the role of vocal dimensions in corporate oral disclosures.

In 2017, the European Commission (EC) published a list of non-cooperative tax havens. We study whether country-level tourism and foreign direct investment (FDI) change as a result of this list. Consistent with a reputational cost of the EC’s “name and shame” campaign, there is a modest reduction in EU tourism among listed countries compared to unlisted ones. This relative reduction is concentrated among tourists from countries that view cheating on taxes as less justifiable. In contrast, listed countries experience a general increase in FDI following the list, a benefit potentially offsetting the costs of reduced tourism.

We study the impact of transparency about banks’ costs on loan interest rates. The Indian Central Bank required banks to disclose a cost-based benchmark interest rate instead of the prime rate. The banks could price loans using any spread to the cost-based benchmark. We find that this change, which made banks’ cost structures more transparent, lowers the interest rates charged and leads to increases in debtor firms’ total borrowings and investments. We hypothesize that increased cost transparency reveals relationship rents to competitor banks and makes it difficult for incumbent banks to maintain high relationship rents because of increased threat of entry.

This paper examines the effect of creditor protection on the choice of government procurement contract types. We use the staggered adoption of anti-recharacterization laws (ARLs) as a quasi-natural experiment to investigate the research question. ARLs strengthen creditors’ rights to repossess collateral in bankruptcy and thus enhance creditor protection. Using a dataset of U.S. government contracts, we find a significant shift from the use of fixed-price contracts to cost-plus contracts after the adoption of ARLs. The effect is more pronounced for firms with higher default risk and stronger firm-government ties. We also find that the government is more likely to switch away or reduce the contract value for contractors affected by ARLs. Overall, our findings point to an important relation between debt contracts and government contracts.

We use staggered enactments of state stakeholder constituency laws as a natural experiment to examine the effect of such laws on corporate pension risk shifting. Our analysis encompasses three components of pension risk shifting: funding risk, investment risk, and benefit risk. We observe a reduction in all three elements of pension risk shifting following the enactment of stakeholder orientation laws that promote greater consideration of stakeholder interests. We also find that the post-enactment reduction in pension risk-shifting is greater for firms with fewer investment opportunities. Overall, our results provide insight into how stakeholder constituency can mitigate an important form of risk-shifting.

This paper examines audit offices’ human capital investment in response to client restatement announcements and the resulting effects on audit quality and audit office client base. We find that audit offices attempt to acquire human capital and talent by posting more audit-related job positions just after a client announces a restatement. The increase in job postings follows restatements with more negative announcement returns and restatements of annual financial statements, and is concentrated among more senior and experienced positions. Importantly, the increased job postings are not driven by replacement hiring due to individual auditor departures and reflect more auditors joining the office. These human capital investments reduce future client misstatements and losses in client portfolios, indicating improvements in actual and perceived audit quality. Audit offices are also more likely to replace audit managing partners and prevent the signing partners of the misstated financial statements from signing new audit reports after restatement announcements.

This paper explores how the emergence of generative artificial intelligence is reshaping the information environment in capital markets. Leveraging an unexpected ban on ChatGPT in Italy, we examine its impact on the information processing capabilities of market participants. We employ metrics for AI-generated text detection to show that the ban coincides with decreased AI usage by domestic financial analysts and fewer earnings forecasts issued relative to foreign analysts covering the same firm. The negative effects are more pronounced among analysts whose pre-ban reports are more consistent with AI use or analysts with a technical background. The ban also diminishes forecast accuracy, increases reliance on industry-specific information, and reduces information efficiency. Furthermore, investor reactions to earnings announcements become more pronounced, and bid–ask spreads widen, reflecting lower market efficiency.

Using the IPO setting, we test whether firms signal the quality of their investments in innovation activities by claiming R&D tax credits. We find the presence and amount of the R&D credit are each associated with lower information asymmetry and with higher investor demand at IPO. Conservatively, we estimate that sample firms realize additional IPO proceeds of 32–45 percent of their creditable R&D expenditures, indicating economically significant non-tax benefits associated with the R&D credit. We verify the R&D credit signal by showing its positive association with firms’ future patenting activity, patent citations, and post-IPO stock returns. Results from these tests are concentrated among firms limited in their ability to obtain tax benefits from R&D credits, consistent with the R&D credit providing nontax benefits as a signal of innovation investment quality.

Roughly two decades ago, standard setters mandated recognition of two controversial expenses: stock-based compensation (SBC) and amortization of intangibles from acquisitions (AMT). Today, most firms “undo” GAAP by excluding these recurring expenses from earnings as part of their non-GAAP reporting. Do investors agree? Using short-window returns around quarterly earnings announcements, we find investors react similarly to unexpected SBC/AMT, regardless of firms' exclusion reporting. Further, among excluders, earnings that include SBC or AMT explain investor reaction better than earnings stripped of these items. Thus, these excluded expenses are an important exception to the well-known regularity that investors find non-GAAP earnings more useful than GAAP earnings. Additional tests reveal that exclusion is not informative about future persistence. Overall, our findings suggest that, in general, investors ignore firms’ exclusion of recurring expenses, which may offer reassurance to standard setters.

A growing body of evidence suggests that Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements can affect private sector beliefs about near-term macroeconomic conditions. We measure the impact of central bank policy on index option trader beliefs about near-term economic conditions using the return of short-term dividend strips around each FOMC announcement (we term this short-term dividend strip return, “SDR”). Consistent with the idea that these announcements contain valuable information about macroeconomic conditions, we find that SDR predicts both future firm-level earnings and firm-level earnings announcement returns. Furthermore, using analyst earnings forecasts, we provide evidence of belief underreaction to FOMC announcements. We discuss how investor specialization and segmented markets can generate our empirical results.