Strategic Press Release When Employee Unemployment Risk Is Better Insured
利用美国各州失业保险福利的错时变化，研究发现当员工失业福利增加时，企业会发布更多坏消息和更少好消息的新闻稿，因为福利降低了企业承担的员工失业风险成本。
Using the staggered changes in unemployment insurance (UI) benefits across states in the United States as an exogenous shock to employees’ costs of unemployment and the hiring firm’s costs of disclosure, this study investigates whether and how a firm’s relationship with its employees impacts its strategic disclosure through press releases. We find that firms increase (reduce) bad (good) press releases after their employees’ UI benefits become more generous. This finding is consistent with the notion that larger UI benefits reduce the costs of employee unemployment risk borne by hiring firms and thus reduce firms’ costs to release bad news items. Interestingly, we find that the large increase in UI benefits is associated with more discretionary, but not nondiscretionary, bad press releases. The findings are robust when we exclude earnings-related press releases from our sample. Further evidence shows that the increase in negative press releases is mainly driven by news regarding earnings, products-services, marketing, credit ratings, assets, and legal issues, which are more closely related to employee perceptions of unemployment risk.