Curriculum Vitae

Working Papers

- I study how firms' disclosure strategies affect users’ information acquisition. Firms can decrease or increase the amount of information simultaneously disclosed to the market by smoothing or bundling disclosures, which influences users' decisions to acquire information and ultimately impacts on market reactions. Using non-earnings 8-Ks from 2003 to 2017, I find that smoothing increases information acquisition. Bundling boosts short-term information acquisition but reduces long-term information acquisition. The results are consistent with smoothing mitigating the negative consequences of disclosure overload. To address the endogeneities concerning firms' choices to employ disclosure strategies, I exploit the 8-K reform in 2004 as a potential exogenous shock that constraints bundling. The results provide causal evidence that bundling decreases information acquisition after the 8-K reform and such effect diminishes in the long-run. In addition, strategic bad news disclosures are associated with higher information acquisition than non-strategic bad news disclosures, suggesting that firms fail to conceal bad news through strategic disclosures. Furthermore, the market reacts more positively to strategic disclosures with higher downloads, indicating that the effectiveness of disclosure strategies is influenced by users' information acquisition.

- We define narrative conservatism as narratives reflecting bad news in a timelier, more news-consistent, and more complete manner than good news. Using a sample of Form 8-K filings from 1993 to 2020, we find that narrative disclosure is conservative. 8-Ks are filed faster, their tone is more news-consistent, and they contain more filings, items, exhibits, and graphs in response to bad news than to good news. We document higher narrative conservatism in voluntary 8-Ks and in settings where managers have more incentives to disclose bad news. In addition, we find narrative conservatism in quarterly reports as well, especially within the MD&A section and higher narrative conservatism for firms with low conditional conservatism.

- We examine whether the shareholder voting requirement in M&As induces disclosure and adds value by reducing information asymmetry. We find that acquirers subject to shareholder voting provide more 8-K disclosure during the transaction period and are more likely to provide timely disclosure of the merger agreement, expected synergy information, and post-merger earnings forecasts. We also find that the association between disclosure and bid-ask spread (transient institutional sales) is more negative (positive) for acquirers subject to shareholder voting, suggesting that disclosure by these firms is more informative and it can affect voting outcomes through changing the deal valuation by investors and the shareholder base. Evidence from falsification tests and a regression-discontinuity design (RDD) supports the causal interpretation of the positive effect of shareholder voting on disclosure.

Research Interests

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