Does Company Reputation Matter for Voluntary Disclosure Quality? Evidence from Management Earnings Forecasts

In this study, we explore the association between company reputation and voluntary disclosure quality as proxied for by the issuance and characteristics of management earnings forecasts. We follow prior literature and proxy for company reputation using measures based on Fortune’s America’s Most Admired Companies List. We find that companies with higher reputations are more likely to issue earnings forecasts, and forecast earnings more frequently. We also find that for the subsample of companies selected to the Most Admired List, earnings forecasts issued by higher reputation companies are more accurate. We provide supporting results from a battery of sensitivity analyses designed to alleviate concerns related to potential endogeneity, the influence of managerial ability, and the influence of information demand. Our study contributes to the voluntary disclosure literature by identifying a unique factor that motivates companies to voluntarily disclose better forward-looking information, and to the reputation literature by demonstrating the effect of company reputation on company efforts to reduce information asymmetry with stakeholders.