Title: More Than Human: The Capital-Market Effects of AI-Powered Corporate Disclosure
Speaker: Xiaoyu (Joanna) Wang, Assistant Professor, Peking University HSBC Business School
Time: 10:00-11:30, April 10, 2026 (Friday)
Venue: Room 1008, Mingde Business Building (Zhongguancun Campus)
Language: English/Chinese
ABSTRACT:
This study examines the use and consequences of corporate disclosures that are at least partially written by AI. We employ state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) to detect and quantify AI-generated text in earnings call presentations during 2015-2024. We document that the use of such text is widespread and increasingly prevalent among firms and industries. Relative to human-written text in earnings calls, AI-generated text has more positive sentiment, greater linguistic sophistication, and more logical and tonal consistency. Instrumental variables regressions show that language generated by AI improves the information quality of earnings calls. Indeed, more use of AI-powered disclosure leads to larger stock market responses to earnings releases, tighter bid-ask spreads, and smaller analyst forecast errors. Mechanism tests reveal that these capital-market effects of AI-generated language are driven not by greater readability, but instead by higher information density. Finally, we find that while the use of AI-powered disclosure lowers firms’ IR wage costs, it does not help firms to reduce their litigation risk or obfuscate unfavorable news.
SHORT BIOGRAPHY:
Joanna (Xiaoyu) Wang is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Peking University HSBC Business School, where she has been a faculty member since Fall 2023. She earned her Ph.D. in Finance from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. At Peking University HSBC Business School, she teaches graduate courses in Investments and Introduction to FinTech Industry. Her research spans corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, labor and finance, firm innovation, and the intersection of artificial intelligence and FinTech. Her work has been published in Management Science and presented at leading academic conferences. Her research has also been featured in the Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, with coverage of her work on FinTech's impact on corporate takeover markets and how interlocking boards drive knowledge spillovers and corporate innovation.