Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Business

Advisor

Edward Li

Advisor

Brandon Lock

Committee Members

Ilan Guttman

Xiaojing Meng

Monica Neamtiu

Subject Categories

Accounting

Keywords

voluntary disclosure, conference calls, innovation, capital market effects, real effects

Abstract

This paper examines Productive Information Calls (PICs), standalone conference calls in which firms voluntarily provide mid-project updates on technological and commercial progress. Using a large language model to classify conference call transcripts, I identify 5,958 PICs hosted by 1,506 U.S. non-financial firms from 2010 to 2022. PICs cluster after earnings announcements and differ systematically from earnings calls in both participants and content. PIC firms earn positive market adjusted returns over the three-day announcement window but underperform innovative peers at two- and three-year horizons. PIC firm-years are associated with lower subsequent innovation output, measured using patent and forward citations. This negative relation is more pronounced when managers face greater capital-market pressure, proxied by transient institutional ownership, analyst coverage, CEO career horizon, and equity-based compensation. The evidence is consistent with a selective disclosure mechanism in which discretion over interim updates allows managers to withhold unfavorable news, biasing project selection toward higher-variance alternatives that convert R&D into patentable output less efficiently. This channel is distinct from proprietary leakage or R&D curtailment and has implications for the design of disclosure requirements for internally generated intangibles.

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This work is embargoed and will be available for download on Friday, June 02, 2028

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