Download or read book Essays on Information Disclosure and the Environment written by Koshy Mathai and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on Corporate Environmental Disclosures and Environmental Performance written by Hani Tadros and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this dissertation is to study the incentives of firms to disclose their environmental information and examine the reliability of the information disclosed. To achieve this objective, there is a need to first understand what constitutes environmental disclosures. The first essay, a review of prior disclosure studies, provides a classification of the different types of environmental disclosures and a synopsis about the motivation to disclose each type of information, the reliability and the relevance of the information disclosed to different stakeholders. The outcome of this research shows that many types of environmental information are relevant to the financial and non-financial stakeholders; however, there are still other types of information that needs to be researched to finally achieve a comprehensive framework of environmental disclosures. The second essay examines the association between environmental disclosures and firms’ environmental performances. The study provides a framework to explain the disclosure process demonstrating the effect of economic and legitimacy factors, environmental performance, and the media communicating these disclosures on the amount and type of information reported. The results suggest that environmental reporting is biased; where firms with higher levels of environmental performance disclose more voluntary information while firms with low-environmental performance tend to meet the mandatory disclosure requirements. There is little evidence to suggest that firms with low-environmental performances use their environmental disclosures to maintain the legitimacy of their environmental operations. The third essay examines the reliability of environmental performance indicators disclosed. The results suggest that the reporting of firms’ EPIs might be free of bias as the study finds no association between the information disclosed and firms’ environmental performance. In general, the dissertation provides assurances over the reliability of environmental information disclosed. There is no denial that firms are subject to pressures from non-financial stakeholders to justify the impact of their operations on the environment. This dissertation shows that firms attempt to use their environmental disclosures to mitigate the effects of these pressures; however, it also suggests that the need to legitimize their operations is not the main driver behind the reporting of environmental information.
Download or read book Essays on Asymmetric Information and Environmental Regulation Through Disclosure written by Jorge García and published by Goteborg University. This book was released on 2007 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Firms Environmental Information Disclosure Financial Performance and Behavior Change written by Ran Zhang and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Managing the Unknown written by Frank Uekötter and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-03-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.
Download or read book Truth Matters written by Zhengyan Li and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mandatory environmental information disclosure policy has proliferated in recent years. In this dissertation, I explore its impacts on individuals' environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions and its interaction with other forms of environmental regulations. This dissertation is comprised of three essays that revolve around the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a major environmental information disclosure program in the U.S., which discloses comprehensive information on the use of toxic chemicals and provides risk measures for various geographic units based on the disclosed information. Using survey data, the first essay examines the relationship between individuals' perception of environmental risk in their communities and their environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions for different racial groups. I find that perception of risk is strongly positively correlated with environmental concern and participatory intentions for all racial groups, especially for Whites and Blacks. But all racial groups' perception of risk deviates from the reality. If people possess the correct perception of risk, which is an attempted goal of information disclosure policy, the predicted concern and participatory intentions would increase significantly for Whites and Blacks, but less so for Hispanics. Through a survey experiment, the second essay directly evaluates the impacts of the provision of correct information about local environmental risk on individuals' attitudes and behavioral intentions. I find that people can correctly use the provided information to update their beliefs and attitudes based on how the new information compares with their prior knowledge, but the results also show that the provided information falls short of further changing behavioral intentions. The third essay studies the impacts of the TRI on the implementation of the Clean Air Act with differences-in-differences based approaches. I find that regulators significantly reduce the inspection and enforcement activities in the Clean Air Act on the group of facilities that disclose information in the TRI. Together, the three essays highlight the complexity of environmental information disclosure policy--it is potentially effective but with heterogenous impacts; it stimulates emotional and psychological responses but may fail to transform the responses to meaningful participation in the policymaking process; it could supplement the implementation of other environmental regulations but may also create loopholes for "green washing". The insights provided by this dissertation have important implications for the use and design of environmental information disclosure policy to maximize its promise and minimize its limitations to achieve effective, efficient, and equitable protection of the environment.
Download or read book Essays on Disclosure the Institutional Environment and the Cost of Capital written by Patricia Ruffing-Straube and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on Corporate Disclosure and Information Externalities written by Yetaotao Qiu and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation includes three essays on corporate disclosure and information externalities. In the first essay, I examine the disclosure behavior of rival firms identified by an Initial Public Offering (IPO) candidate during the IPO quiet period when the IPO candidate is restricted in its communication. I find that the tone of disclosures made by identified rivals becomes more positive during the quiet period, and reverses after the quiet period ends. The strategic disclosure behavior is mainly driven by identified rivals' concerns over product market competition. I also find that this behavior hurts the IPO candidate and benefits the identified rivals. In the second essay, I investigate the relations between IPO firms' peer choice and peer information environment. I find that IPO firms tend to select peer companies with a better information environment, and this effect is more pronounced for IPO firms with greater information uncertainties. I also find support that peer information environment is positively associated with upward offering price revision, post-offering analyst coverage, and negatively associated with the number of amendment filings. Overall, this essay shows that IPO firms can make use of the externalities of peer information to facilitate their initial public offerings. In the third essay, I switch my focus from intra-industry relations to supply chain relations. More specifically, I study the effects of layoff announcements by customers on the valuation and operating performance of their supply chain partners. I find that suppliers experience a negative stock price reaction around their major customers' layoff announcements. The negative price effect is exacerbated when industry rivals of layoff-announcing customers also suffer from negative intra-industry contagion effects. Moreover, these supply chain spillover effects are asymmetric, with only "bad news" layoff announcements causing significant value implications for suppliers, but not "good news" announcements. Supplier firms also reduce their investment in and sales dependence on layoff-announcing customers in subsequent years. Keywords: Disclosure; Product market competition; IPO quiet period; Identified rivals; Information externalities; Peer information environment; Corporate layoffs, Supply chain relations; Stock market return
Download or read book Sharing is Caring written by Teagen M Nabity-Grover and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Online self-disclosure has been studied in a variety of disciplines for more than two decades. Self-disclosure is any information about the self communicated to another person; it is generally decomposed into five dimensions: amount, depth or intimacy, honesty and accuracy, polarity, and intent. In this dissertation, we offer a new contextualization of self-disclosure to online settings. While our review of the literature suggests four dimensions are conceptually similar across contexts, the fifth - intent - is problematic. Intent refers to the willingness to share personal information. In the online context, intent items direct attention to whether one intends to post or is unaware they are posting certain information. In the offline context, unintentional or accidental disclosures occur mostly due to environmental (i.e. seeing a colleague in a locker room) or nonverbal (i.e. facial expressions) cues. However, online communication differs from offline communication in four ways: reduced nonverbal cues, asynchronicity, editability, and breadth of audience. The first three of these unique attributes imply online intent is fundamentally different from offline intent. To account for these differences, there is a need to contextualize self-disclosure to the online environment. We accomplish the contextualization of online self-disclosure through two essays. In essay one, we conduct a thorough review of the literature to evaluate the contextualization of the measures of online self-disclosure and identify areas for improving the construct's measurement. Based on the analysis, we propose four context-specific dimensions to supplant intent in the decomposition of online self-disclosure: willingness to participate, reciprocity, audience control, and conscientious use. In essay two, we develop an operational long- and short-form measure and subject it to rigorous validity testing; in doing so, we compare the new measure to two established instruments and examine its performance within a nomological model. We find support for two of the proposed dimensions and for a new structural definition of online self-disclosure involving two intermediate latent variables: message and behavior. This new structure could help improve the content validity of short, simple instruments that are frequently seen in the literature.
Download or read book From Disclosure to Transparency written by Qi Gao Fritz and published by . This book was released on 2023* with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Disclosure and Assurance of Corporate Social Responsibility written by Isabel-María García-Sánchez and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected here specifically examine the new trends of sustainability performance and reporting. They provide theoretical argumentation and evidence about sustainability performance, and determinants of its voluntary disclosure and external assurance. The book will interest companies, managers, shareholders, stakeholders and public bodies directly related to sustainability performance, the voluntary disclosure of sustainability information, and the adoption of an external assurance process.
Download or read book Three Essays on Information Disclosure written by Mohammad Erfan Danesh Jafari and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My thesis consists of three chapters and each chapter studies a different aspect of how information is generated and diffused among different market participants. Chapter 1 and 2 study the impact of timing of 13(f) disclosures. Section 13(f) of SEC regulation requires any financial institution with \$100 million or more in assets to disclose its holdings on a quarterly basis within 45 days after the quarter end. Recently, the SEC was petitioned to shorten this 45-day period. In Chapter 1, I develop a model to examine the impacts of a shortened reporting period. Among other results, I demonstrate that a shorter reporting period results in more liquid markets albeit at the expense of reducing price informativeness. In chapter 2 we look at 14 years of form 13F filings between 1999 and 2012. We demonstrate that active institutions tend to file their holding disclosures with longer delays. We show that concerns about copycat investors do not cause the financial institutions to delay their filings; however, fears of presence of front-runners prompt the financial institutions to file their disclosures with longer delays. We also look at financial institutions' decision to delay around important corporate events for stocks in the institutions' portfolio and document that institutions delay their filings around these events possibly to hide their true voting powers. Chapter 3 studies the implications of SFAS No. 14 and SFAS No. 131, which require firms to disclose the existence of sales to individual customers representing more than 10\% of total firm revenues. We document that firms gain visibility by disclosing economic relationships with reputable trading partners. We find that supplier firms enjoy a boost in news coverage and a subsequent reduction in advertising expense when they disclose trading relationships with well-known customer firms. After relationship establishment, supplier firms are more likely to be held by the same institutional investor and covered by the same analyst following their customer firms. Our findings highlight the role of product-market network as an important channel through which small and young firms gain investor recognition and improve their operating environment.
Download or read book Essays in the Economics of Information Disclosure written by Daniel Hugh Quigley and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on the Effectiveness of Demand based Mechanisms and Disclosure Strategies in Affecting Firms Environmental and Social Impacts written by Stefanie Kirchhoff and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Information Disclosure as Environmental Regulation written by Tapas Kumar Ray and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on Corporate Information Communications written by Junqi Liu and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays that focus on corporate external communication of accounting information. My dissertation's primary goal is to understand better how firms' financial disclosure behaviors change in response to various internal and external forces. To achieve this goal, I use empirical archival methods and employ several unique settings to examine the influences of three particular forces on firms' financial disclosure activities. Specifically, in the first essay, I focus on a firm's internal production function and ask whether labor cost stickiness shapes income smoothing activities. By contrast, the second and third essays explore the influences of two external factors, namely product market competition with existing rivals and the local information environment, respectively, on firms' mandatory and voluntary disclosure behaviors.
Download or read book Essays on Environmental Policies Under Incomplete Enforcement written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay 1 In this paper I model the optimal monitoring and enforcement strategy when inspection capacity is fixed by budget or manpower constraints. I adopt a leverage enforcement structure that classifies firms into two groups with different enforcement intensities. Optimal monitoring and enforcement requires effective allocation of the fixed number of inspections to the two groups. In each period, a fixed number of firms are selected from each group for inspection, and those with the highest emissions are placed in the targeted group in which the inspection probability is higher. This transition structure induces rankorder tournaments among inspected firms. Once selected for inspection, the emissions of each firm are subject to a standard above which the firm pays a fixed penalty. I find that a regulator facing inspection capacity constraints should leverage the limited inspections by allocating more inspections to the targeted group. In addition, I show that targeting enforcement is generally superior to static enforcement. This is in accordance with findings in the literature. These results are consistent over different ranges of regulatory parameters. Essay 2 We model the optimal design of programs requiring firms to disclose harmful emissions when disclosure yields both direct and indirect benefits. The indirect benefit arises from the internalization of social costs and resulting reduction in emissions. The direct benefit results from the disclosure of previously private information which is valuable to potentially harmed parties. Previous theoretical and empirical analyses of such programs restrict attention to the former benefit while the stated motivation for such programs highlights the latter benefit. When disclosure yields both direct and indirect benefits, policymakers face a tradeoff between inducing truthful self-reporting and deterring emissions. Internalizing the social costs of emissions, such as through a Pigovian tax, will deter emissions, but may also reduce incentives for firms to truthfully report their emissions. Essay 3 This paper investigates the compliance behavior of firms simultaneously regulated under multiple environmental programs. Three possible relationships among regulatory programs are considered: complementarity, substitution and independence. I develop a theoretical model of firm decision making that shows the potential for interrelationships among regulations. I propose an indirect test of the theoretical results and implement the empirical model using data on compliance with Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) for facilities in Michigan that are regulated under both RCRA and Clean Air Act (CAA). Results show evidence of positive cross program effects such that an increase in measures of CAA enforcement intensity lead to increased firm compliance with RCRA; the empirical results are consistent with a complementary relationship between the two programs. Thus coordination is required for optimal monitoring and enforcement strategies.
