Using data and text mining to explore for consistencies between narrative disclosures and financial performance in different markets

本研究使用TFIDF文字探勘技術分析樣本公司年度財務報告裡面的重要非量化資訊，與三項量化財務比率比較，欲探討公司年報在不同市場裡文字敘述與財務表現之一致性。研究結果顯示，根據從2003年至2010年上市半導體公司之年度報告，美國公司的年報較會對財務表現做出誇大的文字敘述，本研究亦發現在文字敘述上，市場較不成熟的中國公司所發布之年報較偏向低估他們的財務表現。This study presented a way to extract useful information out of unstructured qualitative textual data with the use of the TFIDF text mining technique, which was used to help us explore for consistencies between financial performance in the form of quantitative financial ratios and qualitative narrative disclosures in the annual report between countries with different levels of market development. The results show that, based on listed semiconductor companies' annual reports between 2003 to 2010, companies in the United States have a high tendency to exaggerate and overstate about their performance in the MD&A, while less developed markets such as China turned out to have the lowest tendency to exaggerate and was more likely to understate about its performance in their Director's Report