Product market competition and disclosure content differentiation: A topic modeling analysis
利用美国进口关税大幅下降作为竞争冲击，通过主题建模分析10-K文件中的管理层讨论与分析，发现企业会差异化披露主题以保护专有信息，且该效应在专有成本高、产品相似度高或披露文本长的企业中更显著。
Abstract We examine how product market competition affects firms’ disclosure content. Theory suggests that competition leads firms to strategically disclose to avoid proprietary costs; however, the empirical evidence has been mixed. We investigate whether firms manage disclosure content to protect proprietary information, a disclosure strategy under‐researched in the literature. We use a topic‐modeling technique to extract and compare thematic topics that industry peers disclose in management discussion and analysis (MD&A) in 10‐K filings. Exploiting large reductions in US import tariff rates as an exogenous shock to product market competition, we find that firms differentiate disclosure topics in response. This effect is more pronounced when disclosures incur higher proprietary costs, as theoretically predicted, and stronger for firms with greater product similarity to industry peers and those with longer MD&A disclosure texts.