Seminar| Institute of Mathematical Sciences
Time: Monday, January 19th, 2026,10:00-11:00
Location: IMS, RS408
Speaker: Feng Li, Peking University
Abstract: We examine how spoken accents shape the efficiency of information transmission during earnings conference calls. Using audio-based measures of analyst and manager accents for U.S. firms, we show that accent exposure has economically meaningful effects on market reactions and analyst belief formation. Calls with a higher share of accented questioners exhibit wider post-call bid–ask spreads, more negative cumulative abnormal returns following bad news, and larger forecast errors and slower updates among peer analysts. In contrast, in calls with a greater presence of Asian analysts, accent-heavy interactions are associated with more accurate and faster peer-analyst updates, less negative market reactions to bad news, and smaller liquidity deterioration. These improvements are concentrated among same-race peers and in settings where accented Asian analysts ask the questions. Overall, the findings indicate that accents operate both as a communication friction that reduce clarity and increase processing cost, and as a marker of informational depth that more technical or probing questions elicit richer managerial responses that linguistically aligned listeners and investors can better interpret.
About the speaker: 李丰老师任北京大学光华管理学院商务统计与经济计量系副教授，博士生导师。研究领域包括贝叶斯统计学，大规模时间序列预测方法，大数据分布式学习。他的最新研究成果发表在统计与金融期刊JCGS, EJOR, CAR等，担任International Journal of Forecasting 副主编。