Readability of the board's report and the reaction of investors (with respect to economic-political news)

Abstract

Financial reports are the only source of internal information where provided by the board of directors to investors. The qualitative features of the provided information, which have a significant role in the optimal allocation of resources, largely depend on the readability of the information. With respect to this fact that the readability and quickly getting the message from a report is one of the essential qualitative features of presenting information, the current study aims to investigate the effect of this qualitative feature on the reaction of investors and increase in quality of companies’ voluntary disclosure. The readability of the board's report is measured using Fog model while the investors' reaction is measured trough the cumulative abnormal return and trading volume. The statistical population of the research includes: Companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange during 1392-1396, which out of them 159 companies were selected to study using the systematic exclusion sampling method. To test the hypotheses, multivariate regression, panel data and Eviews software have been used. The results indicate a significant relationship between the reaction of investors and readability of the board's report, however, the relationship between the readability of the board's report and the reaction of investors to major economic-political news was not approved. Due to the ability of the current research to inform investors from the manner of providing information by the manager and the readability of the reports, the results of the research are applicable.

Keywords

• readability of the board’s report
• reaction of investors
• cumulative abnormal return