Accounting Seminar（2017-18）

Topic: Discretionary Disclosure on Twitter

Speaker: Hai Lu, Peking University

Time: Wednesday, December 27th, 10:00-11:30 a.m

Place: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

Using a sample of 12.8 million tweets from S&P 1500 firms with active Twitter accounts from 2012 to 2016, we show that firms selectively disclose corporate events on Twitter and choose to post financial disclosures on Twitter more frequently around earnings announcements, accounting filings, and firm-specific news events. Financial disclosures on Twitter are more likely to contain media (image or video) and links around these events. Consistent with predictions from disclosure theory, both effects are strong when the sign of the news is clearly negative or positive. The above patterns of timing and usage of media and links are robust in intraday analysis. We also find that firms with lower institutional ownership are more likely to exercise discretion and the feedback of Twitter users affects firm disclosure in the future. These findings suggest that firms make discretionary disclosure on Twitter and the feedback mechanism on Twitter affects the disclosure patterns in a dynamic manner.

Introduction:

Hai Lu is a professor of accounting at the University of Toronto and Peking University. His research interests lie in the areas of accounting and finance, specifically the regulation of capital markets, insider trading, securities valuation, corporate governance and financial analysts. He has published widely in leading international journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society, The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and Management Science. He was a full professor and associate dean (research) at Singapore Management University in 2015-2017 and served as the president of Chinese Accounting Professors' Association of North America in 2015-2016. He is an editor of Contemporary Accounting Research.

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