Beyond the Numbers: Causal Effects of Financial Report Sentiment on Bank Profitability

Krishna Neupane, Prem Sapkota and Ujjwal Prajapati

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: This study establishes the causal effects of market sentiment on firm profitability, moving beyond traditional correlational analyses. It leverages a causal forest machine learning methodology to control for numerous confounding variables, enabling systematic analysis of heterogeneity and non-linearities often overlooked. A key innovation is the use of a pre-trained FinancialBERT to generate sentiment scores from quarterly reports, which are then treated as causal interventions impacting profitability dynamics like returns and volatilities. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset from NEPSE, NRB, and individual financial institutions, the research employs SHAP analysis to identify influential profit predictors. A two-pronged causal analysis further explores how sentiment's impact is conditioned by Loan Portfolio/Asset Composition and Balance Sheet Strength/Leverage. Average Treatment Effect analyses, combined with SHAP insights, reveal statistically significant causal associations between certain balance sheet and expense management variables and profitability. This advanced causal machine learning framework significantly extends existing literature, providing a more robust understanding of how financial sentiment truly impacts firm performance.

Date: 2026-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.17851 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2602.17851

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().