同行企业描述性创新信息披露的溢出效应——基于机器学习与文本分析法

The Spillover Effect of Peers' Narrative Innovation Information DisclosureBased on Machine Learning and Textual Analysis

探讨同行企业描述性创新信息披露能否通过改善目标企业信息环境,产生促进目标企业创新绩效的溢出效应。基于机器学习和文本分析方法构建披露指标,结果发现,同行描述性创新信息披露水平提高能够显著促进目标企业创新产出“数量”与“质量”提升。信息披露语调越积极、可读性和前瞻性越强,信息披露溢出效应越显著。机制检验发现,拓展目标企业信息获取渠道、加强管理层机会主义行为治理是信息披露溢出效应产生的主要机制。进一步研究发现,相较于“言行不符”的信息披露,“言行一致”的信息披露更能促进目标企业创新绩效提升。通过提高企业创新绩效,同行描述性创新信息披露有助于目标企业长期经营业绩提升。

Adequate information acquisition is beneficial for firms to identify innovation projects,acquire innovation knowledge,and evaluate innovation value.A rich information environment is necessary for promoting corporate innovation performance.Previous studies have shown that,due to similar economic conditions and market environments,peer firms'information disclosure is an important channel for target firms to obtain decision-making information.Firms can conduct research to formulate financial decisions suitable for their own development according to the collected peers'annual report information.Therefore,peers'information disclosure has an economic spillover effect.Will the information disclosure of peer firms affect the target firm's innovation decisions by improving the information environment?The answer to this question can not only help advance the understanding of the spillover effects of information disclosure,but is also of great significance for building an information environment conducive to corporate innovation.To this end,this paper studies whether peer firms'narrative innovation information disclosure affects target firms'innovation performance.It takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2006 to 2022 as the sample,covering a total of 80 industries.The data on firms'patent applications and citation frequency in this study are from the CNRDS and WinGo databases,respectively.The annual report text of listed companies is from Juchao,an information disclosure website designated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission for listed companies,and the text corpus is preprocessed using WinGo data platform tools.Other data are from the CSMAR database.The study employs machine learning and textual analysis to construct the variables of narrative innovation information disclosure and finds that the increase in the level of peers'narrative innovation information disclosure significantly promotes the quantity and quality of target firms'innovation output.Specifically,for each increase in the level of peers'narrative innovation information disclosure by one standard deviation,the total number of patent applications by the target firm in the next period will increase by 0.197,and the number of patent citations will increase by 0.092,accounting for 8.9%and 11.65%of their respective averages.This spillover effect is more pronounced when target firms'narrative innovation disclosure has more positive tones,higher levels of readability,and is more forward-looking.Mechanism tests show that expanding the access to innovation information of target firms and enhancing the governance effect on the opportunistic behavior of target firms'management are the underlying mechanisms.In further analysis,according to the matching between the level of innovation information and the real performance of corporate innovation,this paper finds that,compared with the disclosure style of“inconsistent words and deeds”,the peers'narrative innovation information disclosure style of“consistent words and deeds”can promote the innovation performance of target firms more significantly.Finally,peers'narrative innovation information disclosure significantly promotes the long-term operating performance of target firms by improving their innovation performance.The main findings of this paper provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of narrative innovation information disclosure from the perspective of peer firms,expanding the research perspective on the spillover effects of non-financial information disclosure.The following policy implications are presented.First,government should value the importance of innovation information disclosure and build an institutional environment that encourages listed companies to fully and truthfully disclose innovation information.The policy-making departments should further introduce relevant standards aimed at improving the readability and forward-looking nature of narrative innovation information in annual reports and avoiding low-quality information disclosure.Second,the listed companies should pay attention to the narrative innovation information in their peers'annual reports and improve their ability to distinguish innovation information.When dealing with peers'innovation information,the listed companies should make reference to peer firms'innovation practices,focus on the information that matches practices,and select innovation directions that meet the development needs of the industry.