The value of words in financial disclosures: Tone and the corporate environment.

Over the last decade, textual analysis gained popularity in the study of financial communication with the widespread availability and accessibility of firm-level disclosures. The purpose of this dissertation is to increase our understanding of how disclosure tone is composed. In particular, it focuses on how the environment in which the firm operates explains this linguistic attribute and its associated information value. It does so in the setting of earnings press releases. This study of the corporate environment takes place in three parts. These are (i) the firm's information environment, (ii) the labor market environment, and (iii) its shareholder environment. Each of the share the potential to affect the dissemination of information. As such, the insights from each of these chapters, at large, have a practical contribution in pointing out if/when financial narratives serve as a useful tool for capital market participants. In doing so, it also increases our understanding of the extent to which qualitative information contains incremental information to that of quantitative data.status: publishe