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Both the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the popular press have routinely criticized firms for the complexity of their financial disclosures. This study aims to investigate how financial analysts respond to the tone complexity of firm disclosures.

Using approximately 20,000 earnings conference call transcripts of S&P 1,500 firms between 2005 and 2015, the authors first calculate the abnormal negative tone, the measure of tone complexity; then use such tone measure in econometric models to examine analyst forecast behavior. The authors also test the robustness of the results under different model specifications, tone word lists and alternative tone measure calculations.

Consistent with the notion that analysts respond to the information demand from investors and incur more costs and effort to analyze firm disclosure when the tone is more complex, the authors find that higher tone complexity is positively and significantly associated with more analyst following, longer report duration, more forecast revisions, larger forecast error and larger forecast dispersion. In addition, the authors find that tone complexity has a long-term impact on analyst following but has a limited long-term impact on analyst report duration, analyst revision, forecast error and dispersion.

This study complements existing literature by highlighting the information role of financial analysts and by providing evidence that analysts incorporate the management tone disclosed during conference calls to adjust their forecasting behaviors. The results can be used by policymakers as evidence and support for further improving firm communication from a new dimension of disclosure tone.

This paper explores the impact of tone complexity on the cost of debt in the USA.

A sampling from 692 publicly nonfinancial-traded companies in the USA is employed over the period between 2010 and 2018. Generalized methods of moments (GMM) model is implemented to examine the impact of tone complexity on the cost of debt and its implications upon creditors and users.

The findings show that high-tone complexity is associated with a greater cost of debt. The use of a more complex tone in a company's annual reports has been shown to influence creditors' perceptions of risk.

This research pursues innovation by examining how creditors can use the tone complexity of annual report to assess the level of information asymmetry and estimate the required rate of return accordingly.

This paper explores the factors that shape the complexity of company annual reports in the USA. Using a general-to-specific modeling approach, this study examines the determinants of annual reports' tone complexity.

Negative relationships were found between agency problems and tone; agency costs and readability of annual reports; profitability and tone; and ownership structure and tone complexity.

These relationships helped to confirm several of this study’s hypotheses, whereas positive associations were found between investment growth opportunities and tone complexity, which contradicts one of our initial hypotheses. Findings reveal that the more complex the language in an annual report is, the more difficult it is to strategically make a judgment or decision about the reported financial situation.

Analyzing these variables allows security analysts and investors to obtain important information, not available in the financial statements, which would enhance their understanding of the firm and improve their recommendations and investment decision-making process.

This paper investigates the impact of annual reports complexity (associated with tone complexity) on dividend policy and value of dividend policy.

This paper uses the variable complexity provided by the textual analytics software (Diction 7.0) as the proxy for annual reports' tone complexity. The data covered non-financial American firms from years 2011–2019. The pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and the instrumental variable regression are used to test the study’s arguments.

The findings suggest that the signaling theory of dividends holds in the United States. Firms with more complex annual reports tend to distribute more dividends, mainly in environment of high information. When information asymmetry is high, managers would use dividends as a tool to mitigate information asymmetry. Furthermore, the findings suggest that dividend policy has a stronger impact on firm value, especially when the tones of annual reports are highly complex. These findings support the previous results, namely, that managers would opt for dividend policy as a signaling tool for its positive impact on firm value. The results are robust to potential endogeneity issues and alternative proxies for both dividend policy and information asymmetry.

The results demonstrate that the dividends' signaling theory holds in the United States, where the findings cannot be generalized to all markets; However, the findings of this research can be of use to potential and current investors, users of annual reports and decision makers as well.

The paper highlights the effect of the tone complexity of annual reports (using 10K text analytics) on the value of dividend policy and dividend policy itself in a developed economy. Understanding this relation will enable stakeholders to forecast future dividends, choose more appropriate valuation methods and hence restore investors' faith.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate: how dimensions of tone vary across different forms of corporate accountability narrative; the impact of tone on readability; and the determinants of tone, including consideration of its use in impression management.

Using a multi-year sample of listed companies, the authors measure dimensions of tone across multiple narrative types within the annual report and standalone corporate social responsibility report. Statistical analysis is used to investigate variations of tone across narrative type, each dimension’s influence on readability and the role of antecedent factors.

Analysis reveals that dimensions of tone vary significantly across narrative types (genres) suggesting that tonal patterns form part of the specific stylistic conventions of each genre. Tone is found to be a significant determinant of readability. Little evidence of obfuscation using tone was found, while disclosure type is the most salient determinant of tone.

The study illuminates latent or underlying disclosure norms that can facilitate the identification of “exceptional” cases that do not conform with expected tonal patterns of a particular narrative type and may warrant closer inspection by preparers, auditors or regulators. The issues raised regarding the clarity and balance of textual disclosures highlight the challenges in regulating corporate narratives.

This study highlights that tone is a more nuanced and layered concept than suggested by much of the prior literature. Further, tone ought to be considered in studies examining textual complexity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how CEO narcissism can be related to the usage of an abnormal optimistic tone in financial disclosures. Drawing on upper echelons theory, this paper suggests a link between CEO characteristics, such as narcissism, and accounting choices, such as optimistic financial reporting language.

To measure the narcissistic trait of a CEO, the study builds on a model using a set of 15 archival indicators. The usage of an abnormal optimistic tone is assessed quantitatively when looking at firms’ 10-K filings, where “abnormal” refers to tone that is unrelated to a firm’s performance, risk, and complexity. This approach allows for the use of firm-fixed effects for a sample of US listed firms over the period 1992-2012.

The results show that CEO narcissism is significantly positively related to abnormal optimistic tone in 10-K filings. If a highly abnormal optimistic tone is present, the level of CEO narcissism is positively related to the likelihood of future seasoned equity offerings and larger future investments in research and development.

The findings are relevant for shareholders and stakeholders as well as auditors and legislators. All stakeholders should be aware of the overly optimistic reporting language resulting from CEO narcissism and need to make allowances for it when assessing firm performance based on financial disclosures.

This study is the first to show in a large-scale sample how CEO narcissism can be related to a firm’s use of optimistic language, and thus contributes to the question of how personality traits affect an organization’s financial reporting strategy.

The authors investigate the impact of disclosure tones and financial risk on the readability of annual reports in the banking sector. The authors also examine the moderating effect of banks' financial risk on the tone–readability relationship.

This study relies on the agency theory and the social psychology theory to formulate its testable hypotheses and explain the empirical findings. It uses a sample of 390 bank-year observations from banks listed in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Stock Exchanges during the period 2014–2019. It also employs random effect regressions to analyze the data and to examine the reverse causality/endogeneity in order to obtain robust findings.

This study’s results demonstrate that easy (difficult) to read annual reports is significantly associated with positive (negative) tone. Bank managers characterized as “too positive/optimistic” and banks with higher financial risks publish less readable annual reports. The results also show that the interaction between negative tone and a bank's financial risk is inversely associated with reading difficulty, indicating that managers prepare easy text to clarify causes of their banks’ high risks, yet they communicate this easy text with a negative tone that reflects their feelings/emotions towards the financial risks of their banks.

This study’s findings call for the use of a plain English text that bears a neutral tone and urge financial analysts to go beyond the financial aspects of annual reports. They also stimulate policymakers to draft policies, which ensure the presence of audit committee members who possess a broad expertise to uncover the linguistic issues embedded in the annual reports.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study dedicated to exploring the tone–readability association in the GCC's banking sector.

This study investigates the relationship between the Chief Executive Officer's (CEO) overconfidence and financial reporting complexity in Iran, a context characterized by weak corporate governance and heightened managerial discretion.

The sample consists of 1,445 firm-year observations from 2010 to 2021. CEO overconfidence (CEOOC) is evaluated using an investment-based index, specifically capital expenditures. Financial reporting complexity (Complexity) is measured through textual features, particularly three readability measures (Fog, SMOG and ARI) extracted from annual financial statements. The ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is employed to test the research hypothesis.

Results suggest that CEOOC is positively related to Complexity, leading to reduced readability. Additionally, robustness analyses demonstrate that the relationship between CEOOC and Complexity is more distinct and significant for firms with lower profitability than those with higher profitability. This implies that overconfident CEOs in underperforming firms tend to increase complexity. Also, firms with better financial performance present a more positive tone in their annual financial statements, reflecting their superior performance. The findings remain robust to alternative measures of CEOOC and Complexity and are consistent after accounting for endogeneity issues using firm fixed-effects, propensity score matching (PSM), entropy balancing approach and instrumental variables method.

This study adds to the literature by delving into the effect of CEOs' overconfidence on financial reporting complexity, a facet not thoroughly investigated in prior studies. The paper pioneers the use of textual analysis techniques on Persian texts, marking a unique approach in financial reporting and a first for the Persian language. However, due to the inherent challenges of text mining and feature extraction, the results should be approached with caution.

The insights from this study can guide investors in understanding the potential repercussions of CEOOC on financial reporting complexity. This will assist them in making informed investment decisions and monitoring the financial reporting practices of their invested companies. Policymakers and regulators can also reference this research when formulating policies to enhance financial reporting quality and ensure capital market transparency. The innovative application of textual analysis in this study might spur further research in other languages and contexts.

This research stands as the inaugural study to explore the relationship between CEOs' overconfidence and financial reporting complexity in both developed and developing capital markets. It thereby broadens the extant literature to include diverse capital market environments.

The purpose of this paper is to give a comprehensive review and synthesis of automated textual analysis of corporate disclosure to show how the accuracy of disclosure tone has been incremented with the evolution of developed automated methods that have been used to calculate tone in prior studies.

This study have conducted the survey on “automated textual analysis of corporate disclosure and its impact” by searching at Google Scholar and Scopus research database after the year 2000 to prepare the list of papers. After classifying the prior literature into a dictionary-based and machine learning-based approach, this study have again sub-classified those papers according to two other dimensions, namely, information sources of disclosure and the impact of tone on the market.

This study found literature on how value relevance of tone is varied with the use of different automated methods and using different information sources. This study also found literature on the impact of such tone on market. These are contributing to help investor’s decision-making and earnings and returns prediction by researchers. The literature survey shows that the research gap lies in the development of methodologies toward the calculation of tone more accurately. This study also mention how different information sources and methodologies can influence the change in disclosure tone for the same firm, which, in turn, may change market performance. The research gap also lies in finding the determinants of disclosure tone with large scale data.

After reviewing some papers based on automated textual analysis of corporate disclosure, this study shows how the accuracy of the result is incrementing according to the evolution of automated methodology. Apart from the methodological research gaps, this study also identify some other research gaps related to determinants (corporate governance, firm-level, macroeconomic factors, etc.) and transparency or credibility of disclosure which could stimulate new research agendas in the areas of automated textual analysis of corporate disclosure.

This paper examines the effects of managerial optimism on corporate cash holdings.

The authors construct a novel measure of managerial optimism based on the linguistic tone of annual reports by applying a Naïve Bayesian Machine Learning algorithm to non-numeric parts of Vietnamese listed firms' reports from 2010 to 2016. The paper employs firm and year fixed effects model and also uses the generalized method of moments estimation as robustness checks.

The authors find that the cash holding of firms managed by optimistic managers is higher than the cash holdings of firms managed by non-optimistic managers. Managerial optimism also influences corporate cash holdings through internal cash flows and the current year’s capital expenditures. Although the authors find no evidence that optimistic managers hold more cash to finance future growth opportunities in general, optimistic managers hold more cash for near future investment opportunities than non-optimistic managers do.

The novel measure proposed in this study is expected to provide great potential for future finance studies investigating the relation between managerial traits and corporate policies since it is applicable for any levels of financial market development. In addition, the findings highlight the important role, both direct and indirect, of managerial optimism on cash holdings. Related future research should take this psychological trait into account to gain a better understanding of corporate cash holding.

This paper helps to extend the literature on managerial optimism measurement by introducing a new measure of managerial optimism based on the linguistic tone of annual reports. Furthermore, this is among the first studies directly linking annual report linguistic tone to cash holding. The paper also provides new evidence regarding how managerial optimism affects the relationship between the firm's growth opportunities and cash holding, given that mispricing corrections are naturally uncertain.