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Abstract

This paper examines how the type of news affects firms’ product–level voluntary disclosures. Our sample is publicly–traded biotech firms, a setting which provides strong empirical identification via hand–collected product–level disclosures as our dependent variable, and product–level evidence of individual drugs’ progression through key regulatory milestones towards marketability as our experimental variable. Of note, the latter allows us to distinguish firms’ disclosure treatment of good news (i.e., when drugs progress towards marketability) versus bad news (i.e., when drugs fail a key milestone). We first document that product disclosure is increasing in both good news and bad news: both are consistent with expectations of biotech firms providing enhanced disclosure coincident with their need for external capital to fund ongoing and increasingly expensive product development. Second, we document that product disclosure is higher for good news relative to bad news. Collectively, these findings provide product‐level evidence that managers’ strategically increase disclosures as the degree of both good and bad news increases, and perceive relatively higher net benefits associated with product disclosure for good news relative to bad news.

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