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Non‐Answers During Conference Calls
Author(s) -
GOW IAN D.,
LARCKER DAVID F.,
ZAKOLYUKINA ANASTASIA A.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of accounting research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.767
H-Index - 141
eISSN - 1475-679X
pISSN - 0021-8456
DOI - 10.1111/1475-679x.12371
Subject(s) - construct (python library) , measure (data warehouse) , tone (literature) , association (psychology) , questions and answers , competition (biology) , feature (linguistics) , accounting , actuarial science , psychology , computer science , economics , linguistics , information retrieval , data mining , philosophy , biology , psychotherapist , programming language , ecology
ABSTRACT We construct a novel measure of disclosure choice by firms. Our measure is computed using linguistic analysis of conference calls to identify whether a manager's response to an analyst question is a “non‐answer.” Using our measure, about 11% of analyst questions elicit non‐answers from managers, a rate that is stable over time and similar across industries. A useful feature of our measure is that it enables an examination of disclosure choice within a call. Analyst questions with a negative tone, greater uncertainty, greater complexity, or requests for greater detail are more likely to trigger non‐answers. We find performance‐related questions tend to be associated with non‐answers, and this association is weaker when performance news is favorable. We also find analyst questions about proprietary information are associated with non‐answers, and this association is stronger when firm competition is more intense.