As mentioned in the episode, there is a lot of literature on readability in financial communication and its effects. A few selected studies are:

Both Bernard and Erika mention PhD work on financial communication. Bernard’s student Nils Smeuninx completed his thesis in 2018; the title is “Dear Stakeholder. Exploring the language of sustainability reporting: A closer look at readability, sentiment and perception”. Erika refers to a PhD study on how small investors respond to plain English as opposed to more complex or less readable text:

For her part, Veronika co-supervised a student – Xiaoxi Wu, now at Bocconi University in Milan (Italy) – with the Accounting department at Lancaster University (UK), resulting in this article: 

Erika mentions the Juno app, which is designed to explain technical financial language to lay investors. Here is the screenshot of the example she mentions:

Bernard then refers to Veronika’s first foray into financial communication and narrative accounting: 

An agentless passive, the sentence ‘mistakes were made’ helps to avoid blaming anyone for making mistakes. It has become a catchphrase, often used humorously to hint at disaster, including in gifs and memes:

Back to financial communication: Referring to the gendered metaphors that it often features, Erika mentions this book chapter:

A cross-cultural study into accounting language is 

In the first part of the episode, we also discuss tone as an important concept in financial communication. Intriguingly, media studies have shown that coverage in itself is good enough for the so-called “markets” (investors, analysts, fund managers) to have a positive attitude towards a company:

Finally, the 2019 annual report by Lockheed Martin, which includes the CEO statement that we analyse at the end of the episode, can be found here. 

We will be back in 2025, with some changes to the podcast – stay tuned!