The role of gender in the aggressive questioning of CEOs during earnings conference calls

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Accounting Association via the DOI in this record We investigate the role of gender on the aggressiveness of sell-side analysts’ questions during earnings conference calls. Our tests reveal that the verbal aggressiveness of analysts’ questions is significantly associated with both the gender of the analyst asking the question and the gender of the CEO fielding the question. First, we find that male analysts are more verbally aggressive than female analysts. Specifically, male analysts’ questions are more direct and more likely to be followed with further questions, to have a preface statement, and to be negative, all of which are consistent with verbal aggressiveness. Second, male analysts’ questions to female CEOs are more aggressive than their questions to male CEOs. Gender-based verbal aggressiveness appears to be associated with analysts’ career trajectories: Female analysts who ask aggressive questions have a higher likelihood of becoming “star” analysts, whereas we fail to find such evidence for male analysts

The Role of Information and Financial Reporting in Corporate Governance and Debt Contracting

We review recent literature on the role of financial reporting transparency in reducing governance-related agency conflicts among managers, directors, and shareholders, as well as in reducing agency conflicts between shareholders and creditors, and offer researchers some suggested avenues for future research. Key themes include the endogenous nature of debt contracts and governance mechanisms with respect to information asymmetry between contracting parties, the heterogeneous nature of the informational demands of contracting parties, and the heterogeneous nature of the resulting governance and debt contracts. We also emphasize the role of a commitment to financial reporting transparency in facilitating informal multiperiod contracts among managers, directors, shareholders, and creditors