We examine whether tone management in different aspects of forward-looking statements (FLSs) is related to managers' self-serving overinvestments. Using data for U.S.-listed firms between 2003 and 2019, we provide novel evidence that the abnormal tone of nonearnings-related qualitative FLSs' is significantly and positively related to firms' overinvestments but that other aspects of FLSs are insignificant to overinvestments. Moreover, this relation is more substantial in financially unconstrained firms. Our findings reveal the heterogeneous roles of different aspects of FLSs in firms' opportunistic disclosures concerning future overinvestments. Further analyses also indicate that this relationship is more pronounced for firms with less monitoring and managers with greater career concerns. We also employ instrumental variables with a two-stage least-square approach and a Heckman selection model to mitigate the endogeneity issue. Our results are robust after conducting a battery of robustness tests. Overall, our findings provide robust evidence that managers are likely to strategically manipulate nonearnings-related qualitative FLSs to mislead investors’ perception of firms' future fundamentals to achieve self-serving purposes.

中文翻译：

---

战略性前瞻性非盈利披露和过度投资


我们研究了前瞻性陈述（FLS）不同方面的基调管理是否与管理者自私的过度投资有关。使用 2003 年至 2019 年间美国上市公司的数据，我们提供了新的证据，表明与收益无关的定性 FLS 的异常基调与公司的过度投资显着且正相关，但 FLS 的其他方面对过度投资无关紧要。此外，这种关系在财务不受约束的公司中更为显着。我们的研究结果揭示了 FLS 不同方面在企业关于未来过度投资的机会主义披露中的不同作用。进一步的分析还表明，对于监管较少的公司和职业关注较多的管理者来说，这种关系更为明显。我们还采用两阶段最小二乘法和赫克曼选择模型的工具变量来减轻内生性问题。经过一系列稳健性测试后，我们的结果是稳健的。总体而言，我们的研究结果提供了强有力的证据，表明管理者可能会战略性地操纵与收益无关的定性FLS，以误导投资者对公司未来基本面的看法，以达到自私的目的。