By Aimee Picchu, CBS News
When publicly traded companies report their quarterly results, executives typically talk with investors on a conference call to update them on the current-quarter and expected business trends. But it turns out that many of those executives may not be telling the truth.
orporate execs tend to downplay their current results and provide more pessimistic forecasts and negative tones even when their companies are experiencing strong sales, according to researchers Kenneth Froot, Namho Kang, Gideon Ozik and Ronnie Sadka, who published their findings with the National Bureau of Economic Research.