Summer Zhao

Research

My research interests primarily focus on understanding the incentives and consequences of voluntary managerial disclosures, especially during conference calls. I am also interested in how information intermediaries such as financial analysts shape the firms’ information environments as well as how the boards of directors and shareholders influence and potentially discipline managerial disclosure behavior. 

Job Market Paper

[1] “Shareholder Votes and Executive Strategic Disclosures: Evidence from Say-on-Pay” (solo-authored)

  • Dissertation Committee: Xiao-Jun Zhang (Co-chair), Omri Even-Tov (Co-chair), Ulrike Malmendier, Panos Patatoukas,
  • Presented at: 2026 FARS Mid-year Meeting (scheduled), Santa Clara University, University of Hawaii Manoa, Lehigh University, Fairfield University, Boise State University, Emerging Researchers Consortium in Accounting at Naples, Boston University, Indiana University Bloomington, AAA/Deloitte Foundation/J. Michael Cook Doctoral Consortium, UC Berkeley Finance Lunch Seminar, UC Berkeley Accounting Seminar
  • Abstract: This study examines how shareholder votes influence executive disclosures, leveraging the mandatory adoption of Say-on-Pay (SoP) in the United States, which requires regular shareholder votes on executive compensation. My identification strategy relies on a difference-in-differences design that exploits intra-firm variations in SoP exposure among executives participating in earnings conference calls. I find that executives subject to SoP provide abnormally optimistic disclosures to potentially influence shareholders’ perceptions of their performance and voting decisions. This tone inflation is associated with more favorable SoP voting results but subsequent declines in firm value, suggesting it is strategic. Further analysis indicates that the documented tone inflation is driven by executives’ heightened career concerns and compensation more closely tied to stock performance after SoP adoption. Strong internal and external monitoring partially mitigates the executives’ strategic tone inflation. Overall, the findings highlight the unintended consequences of shareholder votes on managers’ strategic disclosure incentives.

Other Working Papers

[2] “Measuring Analyst Question Quality in Conference Calls: A Machine Learning Approach” (with Ari Yezegel and Xiao-Jun Zhang)

  • Revise and resubmit at Journal of Accounting and Economics
  • Presented at: Bentley University*
  • Abstract: We use supervised machine learning methods to measure the quality of analysts’ questions during earnings conference calls. Our validation tests confirm that high-quality questions, as identified by our algorithm, are associated with longer responses, greater management participation, less obfuscated answers, and a higher likelihood of non-answer responses. Using our question quality measure, we find that calls with high-quality questions are associated with greater subsequent stock liquidity, lower stock return volatility, and less abnormal trade volume. The effects are more pronounced for firms with more opaque information environments (e.g., less analyst following, lower institutional ownership, and greater analyst forecast dispersion). Additionally, we find that high-quality questions tend to focus on firm operations, are longer, more complex, less aggressive, forward-looking, and open-ended. Our findings have implications for market participants and regulators concerned with enhancing the effectiveness of corporate communications and information dissemination in capital markets.

[3] “Silence After the Call: Strategic Withholding of Earnings Call Materials on Corporate Websites” (with Wilbur Chen, Omri Even-Tov, and Ziqing Tian)

  • Presented at: HKUST*, UC Berkeley Brownbag
  • Abstract: We hand-collect a novel dataset on corporate website disclosures of earnings conference call materials and document substantial variation in both the types of materials disclosed (i.e., slides, transcripts, and audio recordings) and in their temporal availability. Notably, we identify intermittent “call disclosure gaps”, defined as the omission of materials in a given quarter that were previously disclosed. We find consistent evidence that these gaps are strategic since they are (1) more likely to occur when the company experiences negative events, and (2) associated with greater risks of future financial restatements, class-action lawsuits and operating performance declines. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that these gaps are more related to future negative events in firms where investors are more reliant on corporate websites for information, and among firms with greater information asymmetry and weaker corporate governance. Lastly, investors do not appear to react to the disclosure gaps but react negatively to the subsequent restatement and class-action events related to these gaps. Overall, our findings highlight an unexplored yet economically meaningful channel through which firms manage the post-earnings information environment.

[4] “Credit Sentiments in Conference Calls and Bond Market Returns” (solo-authored)

  • Presented at: 2024 AAA FARS Mid-year Meeting (Research Roundtable), 2023 AAA Annual Meeting, UC Berkeley Accounting Seminar
  • Abstract: I examine whether and how bond market returns are affected by credit sentiments in conference calls, which refer to the tone of management and analysts when they discuss credit-related topics. I first show that more positive credit sentiments in conference calls are associated with more positive credit rating changes as well as lower CDS spreads and cost of debt in the future. Consistent with the asymmetric bond price responses to earnings news in the literature, I document a positive relation between credit sentiments and bond returns around earnings announcements mainly for firms with negative earnings news. I also document a significant relationship between credit sentiments and future bond returns, suggesting that bond investors underreact to credit sentiment information. Cross-sectional analysis shows that management credit sentiments are more informative for firms with more debt or worse credit ratings, but its informativeness is substantially reduced when the macro credit environment is extremely negative. Analyst credit sentiments are more informative for firms with recent issuance of new bonds or credit rating downgrades when management might have incentives to inflate their credit sentiments.

* Presented by coauthors