IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jbfnac/v46y2019i9-10p1063-1096.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Repetitive disclosures in the MD&A

Author

Listed:
  • Heather Li

Abstract

This study is the first to empirically analyze repetitive disclosures in the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) section of the 10‐K filing. Repetitive disclosures refer to the extent that content in the MD&A is repeated from the audited financial statement notes. I empirically analyze repetitive disclosures in the MD&A section of the 10‐K filing, and find that firms tend to use more repetitive disclosures when firms have a new CEO, a high level of new disclosures in the notes, issued equity, and have missed the prior year's earnings benchmark. These findings suggest that not all managers use repetitive disclosures to simply obfuscate disclosures. Rather, some managers use repetitive disclosures to emphasize firm‐specific events, consistent with the succession hypothesis. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) states that repetitive disclosures are uninformative and that such disclosures decrease the informativeness of other disclosures in the MD&A. Casting doubt on the SEC's comments, in my primary analyses, I find that repetitive disclosures are informative to investors; this result is stronger for individual investors. Overall, my results suggest that repetitive disclosures are informative, and such disclosures may be effective tools for providing information to investors.

Suggested Citation

  • Heather Li, 2019. "Repetitive disclosures in the MD&A," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(9-10), pages 1063-1096, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:46:y:2019:i:9-10:p:1063-1096
    DOI: 10.1111/jbfa.12405
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.12405
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jbfa.12405?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. John Berns & Patty Bick & Ryan Flugum & Reza Houston, 2022. "Do changes in MD&A section tone predict investment behavior?," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 129-153, February.
    2. Kalelkar, Rachana & Xu, Hongkang & Nguyen, Duong & Chen, Zheng, 2024. "Generalist CEOs and the readability of the 10-K report," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    3. Kevin Koh & Heather Li & Yen H. Tong, 2023. "Corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and stakeholder engagement: Evidence from the quantity and quality of CSR disclosures," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(2), pages 504-517, March.
    4. Flagmeier, Vanessa & Müller, Jens & Sureth, Caren, 2020. "When do firms highlight their effective tax rate?," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 259, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    5. Muhammad Nadeem, 2022. "Board Gender Diversity and Managerial Obfuscation: Evidence from the Readability of Narrative Disclosure in 10-K Reports," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 179(1), pages 153-177, August.
    6. Ankit Jain & Hariom Manchiraju & Shyam V. Sunder, 2023. "Institutional ownership and the informativeness of disclosure tone," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1-2), pages 61-90, January.
    7. Luminita Enache & Hila Fogel‐Yaari & Heather Li, 2022. "Signalling long‐term focus through textual emphasis on innovation: are firms putting their money where their mouth is?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(3), pages 3791-3836, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jbfnac:v:46:y:2019:i:9-10:p:1063-1096. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0306-686X .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.