IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/joares/v64y2026i2p979-1020.html

Do Earnings Announcements Affect Employee Spending? Evidence from Transaction Data

Author

Listed:
  • Ben Lourie
  • Alexander Nekrasov
  • Phong Truong
  • Chenqi Zhu

Abstract

Leveraging micro‐level data on individual employees’ bank and credit card transactions, we examine the impact of earnings announcement (EA) news on employee spending. Utilizing an event study methodology, we find strong evidence that EA news elicits significant reactions in employee spending. These reactions are stronger for employees located in the firm's headquarters state, with longer tenure, possessing investment experience, or earning higher wages, consistent with these employees being more likely to attend to their firm's EAs. The reactions are also stronger for the fourth fiscal quarter than interim quarters, suggesting that year‐end results garner greater employee attention. Furthermore, consistent with media facilitating employee processing of EA news, the reactions are stronger for EAs covered by a larger number of news articles. Finally, in line with the notion that EAs contain information about employees’ future cash flows, we find that EA news predicts changes in employee wages and that employees with higher past wage‐to‐EA news sensitivity exhibit stronger spending reactions. Overall, our findings provide evidence of the role of financial reporting in employees’ spending decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben Lourie & Alexander Nekrasov & Phong Truong & Chenqi Zhu, 2026. "Do Earnings Announcements Affect Employee Spending? Evidence from Transaction Data," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 64(2), pages 979-1020, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:64:y:2026:i:2:p:979-1020
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-679X.70027
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-679X.70027
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-679X.70027?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:joares:v:64:y:2026:i:2:p:979-1020. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1475679x .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.