Benjamin Segal studies whether managers are strategic in reporting non-earnings news

Benjamin Segal’s coauthored paper, “Are managers strategic in reporting non-earnings news? Evidence on timing and news bundling,” was published in the December 2016 edition of Review of Accounting Studies.  The authors study a sample of non-earnings-related SEC Form 8-K filings to examine whether firms strategically report mandatory and voluntary news. Do firms report negative news when investor attention is low? Do they bundle positive and negative news?  Their findings support the notion that managers believe in the existence of investor inattention and strategically report negative news after trading hours. They also observe that publicly traded firms are more likely to strategically disclose through news bundling, and this likelihood increases with the likelihood of strategic disclosure through timing.