This paper studies the relation between the quality of corporate narrative disclosure and the timeliness of goodwill impairments. We combine five measures of the linguistic content of annual report narratives to generate a proxy for narrative disclosure quality. To measure the timeliness of impairments, we deploy a model that relates observed goodwill impairments to the main determinants of impairments identified by prior literature, focusing especially on current period negative stock returns. We hypothesise and find that the impairments of firms with low-quality narrative disclosures are less timely than the impairments of firms with high-quality disclosures. In addition, using a signalling argument, we hypothesise, and find that the market response to goodwill impairments is more negative for firms with low disclosure quality.

本文研究了公司叙述披露的质量与商誉减值的及时性之间的关系。我们将年度报告叙述的语言内容的五项衡量标准结合起来，以生成叙述披露质量的代理。为了衡量减值的及时性，我们部署了一个模型，将观察到的商誉减值与先前文献确定的减值的主要决定因素联系起来，特别关注当前期间的负股票回报。我们假设并发现，叙述性披露质量低的公司的减值不如披露质量高的公司的减值及时。此外，使用信号参数，我们假设并发现市场对商誉减值的反应对于披露质量低的公司更为负面。