Disclosure Tone and Shareholder Litigation
Chicago Booth School of Business Research Paper No. 09-01
AAA 2010 Financial Accounting and Reporting Section (FARS) Paper
51 Pages Posted: 23 Jan 2009 Last revised: 7 May 2011
There are 2 versions of this paper
Disclosure Tone and Shareholder Litigation
Disclosure Tone and Shareholder Litigation
Date Written: May 1, 2011
Abstract
We examine the relation between disclosure tone and shareholder litigation to determine whether managers’ use of optimistic language increases litigation risk. Using both general-purpose and context-specific text dictionaries to quantify tone, we find that plaintiffs target more optimistic statements in their lawsuits and that sued firms’ earnings announcements are unusually optimistic relative to other firms experiencing similar economic circumstances. These findings are consistent with optimistic language increasing litigation risk. In addition, we find incrementally greater litigation risk when managers are both unusually optimistic and engaging in abnormal selling, consistent with insider sales signaling an intent to mislead underlying the manager’s optimistic statements. Finally, we find that insider selling is associated with litigation risk only when contemporaneous disclosures are unusually optimistic.
Keywords: Securities litigation, disclosure, tone, earnings announcements, insider trading
JEL Classification: G38, K22, M41, M45
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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