The Role of Big Business Over Time and Across Societies

Emanuele Colonnelli, Assistant Professor of Finance, Liew Family Junior Faculty Fellow and Fama Faculty Fellow

This project aims to capture the evolution of the relationship between big corporations and society over time and across the world, using cutting-edge text analysis techniques from the computer science literature. In particular, the goal is to understand both (a) the societal preceptions of big corporations, and (b) the changing strategies adopted by big corporations in light of evolving societal expectations about them. To do so, I plan to rely on two main bodies of textual information on which to conduct several sets of analysis. On the one hand, I plan to measure societal perceptions of big corporations using the full text contained in both US and international  newspapers since at least 1980. On the other hand, I plan to measure big corporations’ changing strategies to doing business using the full text contained in the conference call reports of publicly listed corporations world-wide, dating back to the 1990s. While these are the main sources of data, additional text-based data sources will be used, such as other disclosure documents produced by listed firms and their investors, as well as historical archives of newspapers and magazines.