A review of artificial intelligence and biologically inspired computational approaches to solving issues in narrative financial disclosure

Abstract

Indisputably, financial reporting has a key role to play in the efficient workings of capitalist economies. Problems related to agency and asymmetric information (Jensen and Meckling, 1976) would abound and cripple financial markets, as it has done when left unchecked (Enron, WorldCom and Tyco). However for too long, quantitative data has monopolised the assessment and prediction role within this arena and this has contributed to the failures, borne out by research (Kumar & Ravi, 2007). As qualitative data proliferates, containing value relevant information it needs to be factored into the analysis. This paper reviews work on financial narrative disclosures and looks at conventional artificial intelligence and more recent biologically inspired computational approaches to catapult the domain to more progressive methods of using linguistic data in evaluations. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.