This paper examines how overconfident CEOs adjust financial report readability (FRR) in response to Regulation Fair Disclosure (RegFD). Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that while being associated with lower readability ex ante, overconfident CEOs increase their firms' FRR relatively to non-overconfident peers after the importance of public disclosure grows due to RegFD adoption. We also find that the relative increase in readability is dependent on the extent of firms' financial constraints and financing through the equity market. Overall, our results suggest that overconfident CEOs fine-tune FRR to reduce the external equity financing cost, especially when selective disclosure and communication are restricted.

本文研究了过度自信的 CEO 如何调整财务报告可读性 (FRR) 以应对监管公平披露 (RegFD)。我们的差异分析表明，虽然与事前可读性较低有关，但由于采用 RegFD，公开披露的重要性增加后，过度自信的 CEO 相对于非过度自信的同行增加了公司的 FRR。我们还发现，可读性的相对提高取决于公司财务约束和通过股票市场融资的程度。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，过度自信的 CEO 会微调 FRR 以降低外部股权融资成本，尤其是在选择性披露和沟通受到限制的情况下。