An extensive stream of literature investigates how product market competition, by increasing the proprietary costs of disclosure, influences corporate disclosure policy. We hypothesize that the proprietary costs incurred by firms are associated with how a disclosure is framed and structured. We predict and find that the intensity of competition in the product market is associated with more negative and uncertain earnings conference calls. We also find evidence of firms “casting calls” by emphasizing more pessimistic analysts’ questions. Our results are robust to matched analyses on cash flow uncertainty and to examining the casting of analysts, as opposed to their questions, on the earnings call. Finally, we find consistent results using alternative measures of linguistic structure and in an alternative channel of disclosure with an alternative measure of linguistic framing. Our results demonstrate that firms attempt to mitigate proprietary costs by managing discretionary disclosure structure and framing their conference calls.

大量文献调查了产品市场竞争如何通过增加披露的专有成本来影响公司披露政策。我们假设公司产生的专有成本与披露的框架和结构方式有关。我们预测并发现产品市场的竞争强度与更多负面和不确定的收益电话会议相关。我们还通过强调更悲观的分析师的问题，找到了公司“投出电话”的证据。我们的结果对于现金流不确定性的匹配分析以及在收益电话会议上检查分析师的铸造而不是他们的问题是稳健的。最后，我们使用语言结构的替代措施和在另一种披露渠道中使用语言框架的替代措施找到了一致的结果。我们的结果表明，公司试图通过管理酌情披露结构和制定电话会议来降低专有成本。