Secondary Outcomes (end points)
As a secondary outcome measure, we will assess a company’s responsiveness by classifying interactions into four groups: (1) the company responds and is willing to schedule a call, (2) the company responds and is unwilling to schedule a call but is willing to answer questions via email, (3) the company responds but is not willing to talk nor makes an effort to answer questions via email, and (4) the company does not respond. Companies will be classified as non-responsive if they fail to reply within 14 days of the initial email and subsequent follow-up procedures outlined in Section 3. Based on these groupings, we will create an ordered variable, Responsiveness, taking the values 3, 2, 1, and 0 for companies classified in groups (1), (2), (3), and (4), respectively.
To quantify the timeliness and quality of information provision, we will create additional outcome variables. Speed of Response will measure the number of hours between our initial email and the first substantive IR response (i.e., excluding auto-replies), capturing how quickly investors receive attention from a real individual. For companies willing to schedule a call, we will create Speed of Meeting, measuring the number of business hours between our initial email and the earliest proposed call time. To provide evidence on the quality of information provision, we will measure Seniority, a ranked variable based on the job titles of individuals offered for calls, with the assumption that more senior representatives possess higher quality company information. We will hand-collect these job titles and create a ranking based on our sample.