We decompose quantitative management earnings forecasts into macroeconomic and firm‐specific components to determine the extent to which voluntary disclosure provided by management has macroeconomic information content. We provide evidence that the forecasts of bellwether firms, which are defined as firms in which macroeconomic news explains the greatest amount of variation in the forecasts, provide timely information to the market about the macroeconomy when bundled with earnings announcements. Further, we show that bellwether firms provide timely information about both industry‐specific events and broader economic events. Finally, we document that the macroeconomic news in individual forecasts is more pronounced for bad news and point forecasts.

This study investigates the role of tax avoidance in the credit‐rating process and whether differences exist in how rating agencies account for the risk relevance of tax avoidance. Using a sample of initial credit ratings assigned to public debt issuances during 1994–2013, our evidence is consistent with Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's assessing the costs and benefits associated with tax avoidance differently from one another, resulting in more frequent and pronounced rating agency disagreement. Rating agency disagreement over tax avoidance is most evident when it is accompanied by relatively high levels of uncertain tax positions, foreign activities, research and development activities, or tax footnote opacity. We also find evidence that decreases (increases) in tax avoidance or tax footnote disclosure opacity are positively (negatively) associated with the convergence of split ratings. This suggests that firms can exacerbate or mitigate rating agency disagreement subsequent to bond issuance. Our study complements prior research by examining why sophisticated information intermediaries disagree about the risk relevance of tax avoidance. It also sheds light on how firms can influence rating agencies’ understanding of tax avoidance.

We propose a new measure of readability, the Bog Index, which captures the plain English attributes of disclosure (e.g., active voice, fewer hidden verbs, etc.). We validate this measure using a series of controlled experiments and an archival-based regulatory intervention to prospectus filing readability. We also demonstrate the importance of understanding the underlying drivers of quantity-based measures of readability. In particular, we caution researchers that a vast amount of the variation in Form 10-K file size over time is driven by the inclusion of content unrelated to the underlying text in the 10-K (e.g., HTML, XML, PDFs).