Annual Report Readability and Stock Liquidity

Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, Forthcoming

41 Pages Posted: 19 Mar 2018

See all articles by Sabri Boubaker

Sabri Boubaker

Ecole de Management de Normandie

Dimitrios Gounopoulos

University of Bath - School of Management

Hatem Rjiba

PSB Paris School of Business

Date Written: March 9, 2018

Abstract

We examine the effect of annual report textual complexity on firms’ stock liquidity. Using techniques from computational linguistics, we predict and find that less readable filings are associated with lower stock liquidity. Our study provides evidence that difficult-to-read annual reports hinders investor’s ability to process and analyze information contained in corporate annual reports, reducing thereby their willingness to trade which decreases stock liquidity. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including endogeneity, use of alternative regression techniques, and use of alternative liquidity and readability proxies.

Keywords: Annual Report Readability, Textual Complexity, Stock Liquidity, Information Asymmetry

JEL Classification: G11, G12, M48

Suggested Citation

Boubaker, Sabri and Gounopoulos, Dimitrios and Rjiba, Hatem, Annual Report Readability and Stock Liquidity (March 9, 2018). Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3141045

Sabri Boubaker

Ecole de Management de Normandie ( email )

9 rue Claude Bloch
Le Havre Cedex, Cedex 4 14052 Caen
France

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.em-normandie.com/en/sabri-boubaker

Dimitrios Gounopoulos

University of Bath - School of Management ( email )

Hatem Rjiba (Contact Author)

PSB Paris School of Business ( email )

59 rue Nationale
Paris, 75013
France

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
330
Abstract Views
1,219
Rank
166,396
PlumX Metrics