Straight Talkers and Vague Talkers: The Effects of Managerial Style in Earnings Conference Calls

We thank Karthik Balakrishnan, Snehal Banerjee, Francois Brochet, Joey Engelberg, Thomas Hellmann, Samuli Knüpfer, Tim Loughran, Marina Niessner, Chris Parsons, Marta Serra-Garcia, Joel Sobel, David Solomon, Jared Stanfield, and Christian Wilk and seminar participants at Aarhus University, Copenhagen Business School, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm University, UC San Diego, the University of Hamburg, and the University of Nottingham as well as conference participants at the 2017 AFA Meetings, the 2016 EFA Meetings, the 2016 EFMA Meetings, the 2017 European Winter Finance Summit, the 2016 FMA Meetings, the 2016 FMA Asia-Pacific Meetings, the 2016 SFI Gerzensee Research Days, the 2016 SFS Cavalcade, the Textual Analysis in Economics and Finance workshop, and the 2016 Young Scholars Nordic Finance Workshop for valuable comments. We thank the Swiss Finance Institute and the NCCR FINRISK and the UZH Research Priority Program Financial Market Regulation for support. We thank Maxim Litvak and Denis Petrov for excellent programming. Ivan Petzev has provided outstanding research assistance. This paper was previously circulated under the title: “In no (un)certain terms: Managerial style in communicating earnings news.” The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.