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This study aims to examine the disclosure determinants of environmental performance indicators (EPIs) for a sample of US firms to understand if these disclosures are reliable or whether they are biased towards the reporting of positive information.

The study uses a panel data analysis to examine the association between firms’ EPIs disclosures and their environmental performances, and other economic and legitimacy factors.

The results show that firms’ disclosures are not associated with the level of environmental performance and that firms continue to provide EPI information even if they witness a decline in their environmental performance. The evidence suggests that firms’ environmental disclosures are reliable and indicative of their environmental performance.

The findings suggest that mandating EPI disclosures may increase the level of the information reported and reduce firms’ discretion over the disclosure of such information.

Reporting of EPIs is directly linked to firms’ environmental performances. By examining the association between EPI disclosures and environmental performance, the study contributes to the ongoing debate about firms’ reporting and whether it is informative to its stakeholders or whether firms use this type of information to legitimize their operations and portray it in a positive light.

Focusing on a sample of firms from environmentally sensitive industries over several years, this study aims to reexamine the association between environmental disclosure and environmental performance.

The authors use a panel data analysis to examine how the interaction between environmental performance and economic and legitimacy factors influence firms’ environmental disclosures.

Results suggest that environmental performance moderates the effect of economic and legitimacy incentives on firms’ propensity to provide proprietary environmental disclosure, with both sets of incentives being influential. More specifically, there appears to be a reporting bias based on the firm’s environmental performance whereas the high-performers disclose more environmental information in the three following vehicles: annual report, 10-K and sustainability reports combined. Results also show that economic and legitimacy factors influence the disclosure decisions of the low and high environmental performers differently.

Understanding the determinants of environmental disclosure for high and low environmental performers helps regulators to close the reporting gap between these firms.

There is little evidence to suggest that firms with low-environmental performance attempt to use their disclosures to legitimize their environmental operations.

The study examines environmental disclosures of 78 firms over a period of 14 years in annual, 10-K and sustainability reports. The panel data analysis controls for significant cross-sectional and period effects.

This study examines the long-term link between fair valuation uncertainty and discounts/premia in closed-end funds. This study argues that, in exploring the close-end funds puzzle, prior research generally omits to consider the uncertainty surrounding the measurement of funds' financial disclosure, as reflected in the fair value hierarchy, when investment specialty differs across funds.

Regressions were employed to explore how the fair value hierarchy affects closed-end funds' discounts/premia when investment specialty differs. The authors also examine the effects pre- and post-2012 to explore if that relationship changes due to the additional disclosure requirements enacted at the end of 2011.

The authors find that the three levels of the fair value hierarchy have effects that vary according to a fund's specialty. For equity specialized funds, Level 3 significantly increases discounts and decreases premia, suggesting the impact of valuation uncertainty that underlies Level 3 estimates; this relationship disappears (decreases in severity) for premia (discount) experiencing funds post-2012. In contrast, Level 1 and Level 2 do not have any significant effect on discounts or premia except that post-2012, Level 2 begins to display discount decreasing effects. For bond specialized funds, no significant association was noted between premia and any of the fair value levels except that post-2012, Level 3 begins to display premium increasing effects. However, results are different for discounts. The authors note that Level 1 valuations significantly increase discounts, but only post-2012; Level 2 valuations significantly decrease discounts (pre- and post-2012), consistent with such estimates incorporating unique and relevant information; and Level 3 valuations do not have a significant effect on discounts.

The results of this study revisit prior evidence and indicate that results about the effects of fair value measurement and the closed-end funds' puzzle are sensitive to the period length being considered and the investment specialty of the fund. The authors also note that additional disclosure regarding Level 3 valuation inputs decreases market concern for valuation uncertainty and increases the liquidity benefits of investing in Level 3 carrying funds.

This study aims to investigate how audit committee members’ geographical location relative to corporate headquarters affects audit fees. The motivation for the paper rests on the observation that regulatory and market trends have significantly affected the composition of boards of directors and audit committees. To ensure that audit committees play their monitoring role, regulations now require directors’ independence and some level of financial expertise. The need to find directors who meet these requirements, as well as the advent of globalization and technological improvements lead firms to expand their reach when looking for directors.

The authors use a sample of 1,517 firm-year observations of Canadian firms from 2008 to 2017. The study relies on multivariate analyses.

The results show that, among nonlocal audit committee members, the presence of foreign directors is associated with higher audit fees. In contrast, other nonlocal audit committee members do not have a differential impact on audit fees. This effect is more prevalent in large firms. Moreover, having a foreign chair of the audit committee as well as foreign audit committee members who are not accounting experts appear to accentuate the increase in audit fees. A possible explanation for the finding is that, from the supply side, auditors assign a higher risk to firms with a higher percentage of foreign audit committee members. Alternatively, from the demand side, firms with foreign audit committee members may ask for more audit effort. Further analysis indicates that having a higher percentage of foreign audit committee members is associated with a higher likelihood of restatements, an indication of low audit quality.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to document that auditors price the location of audit committee members and consider it when planning for their audit.

This paper aims to examine the relation between voluntary disclosure (VD) in audit committee reports and banks’ earnings management. It investigates whether such disclosure reflects an attempt by audit committees to engage in impression management.

The study considers top US bank holding companies from 2006 to 2015. The authors develop a scoring grid to measure VD in audit committee reports. The scoring grid is based on recommendations from 10 industry and governance organizations’ reports that analyzed audit committee disclosures. Multivariate regression analyzes are used in this paper.

Descriptive statistics reveal that the level of VD in audit committee reports did not increase significantly from 2006 to 2015. Multivariate analyzes indicate that whenever banks’ level of earnings management is high, audit committees increase the extent of their VDs in their reports. The authors infer from this finding that audit committees are using VDs as a vehicle for impression management.

This paper sheds light onto the motives behind audit committees’ VDs. The evidence, which is consistent with impression management by audit committees in their report, also provides further background to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent initiative to enhance VDs in the audit committee report.

This paper investigates the effects of layoff announcement by customers on the valuation and operating performance of their supply chain partners.

The authors collect corporate layoff announcements from 8-K filings submitted by US publicly-traded firms from 2004 to 2017. Using event study methodology, they examine the information externality of corporate layoffs on announcing firms' suppliers.

Results show that suppliers, on average, 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. Additionally, 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 investments in and sales dependence on layoff-announcing customers in subsequent years.

This study shows that layoff decisions, often aimed at improving firms' efficiency and effectiveness, create uncertainty for the suppliers' operation and cause negative value implications on firms' upstream partners. Findings should be useful to corporate decision-makers in making layoff decisions.

This paper is one of the first to address the value implications of corporate layoffs on announcing firms' suppliers. It provides a more comprehensive picture of the economy-wide impact of achieving efficiency through employee layoffs.

This paper aims to examine how the use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) incentives intersects with top management power and various corporate governance mechanisms to affect excess annual cash bonus compensation.

The authors use a novel artificial intelligence (AI) technique to obtain data about ESG incentives use by firms in the S&P 500. The authors test the hypotheses with an endogenous treatment-regression and a contrast test.

When the top management team has power and uses ESG incentives, there is a 32% reduction in excess annual cash bonuses implying ESG incentives are an effective corporate governance tool. However, nuanced analyses reveal that when powerful management teams with ESG incentives are from environmentally sensitive industries, have a corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee or have long-term view institutional shareholders, they derive excess bonuses.

Stakeholders will better understand management’s motivations for the inclusion of ESG incentives in executive compensation contracts and be able to identify situations which require closer scrutiny.

Given the increased popularity of ESG incentives, society, regulators, boards of directors and management teams will be interested in better understanding when these incentives might be effective and when they might be abused.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the use of ESG incentives in relation to excess pay. The authors contribute to both the CSR and executive compensation literatures. The work also uses a new methodological technique using AI to gather difficult-to-obtain data, opening new avenues for research.

This article aims to explore whether a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) transparency alleviates a firm's cash holdings.

CSR transparency ratings encompass both the quantity and the quality of CSR practices, as validated by Bloomberg. While based upon firm-specific disclosure, transparency ratings impound additional information gathered independently by Bloomberg and thus bridge the gap between CSR disclosure and CSR performance. The authors use ordinary least squares estimators, and the authors concentrate on a panel of S&P 500 index companies over the period of 2012–2018 to examine the effect of CSR transparency on corporate cash holdings.

The authors document that a higher level of CSR transparency induces a lower level of corporate cash holdings. Additional results imply that this negative relationship is more pronounced for firms suffering from high information asymmetry, with low financial reporting quality and for those with weak governance. Further analyses document that higher CSR transparency can help firms to enjoy lower cost of debt and to be less financially constrained, enabling high CSR transparent firms to obtain external financing more easily and at a lower cost, thus lowering the need to hoard cash. Ultimately, the study findings suggest that CSR transparency increases the market value relevance of an additional dollar in cash holdings.

The authors contribute to both research streams of CSR and corporate cash holdings as they provide evidence about the influence of CSR transparency as a monitoring and insurance-like mechanism on corporate cash holdings.

This study aims to examine the association between fair value accounting and the cost of corporate bonds, proxied by bond yield spread. In addition, this study explores the moderating role of auditor industry expertise at both the national and the city levels.

This study first examines the effect of the use of fair value on yield spread by estimating firm-level regression model, where fair value is the testing variable and yield spread is the dependent variable. To test the differential impact of the three levels of fair value inputs, this paper divides the fair value measures based on the three-level hierarchy, Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3, and replace them as the test variables in the regression model.

This study finds that the application of fair value accounting is generally associated with a higher bond yield spread, primarily driven by Level 3 estimates. The results also show that national-level auditor industry expertise is associated with lower bond yield spreads for Level 1 and Level 3 fair value inputs, whereas the impact of city-level auditor industry expertise on bondholders is mainly on Level 3 fair value inputs.

The paper innovates by exploring the impact of fair value accounting in a setting that extends beyond financial institutions, the traditional area of focus. Moreover, most prior research considers private debt, whereas this study examines public bonds, for which investors are more likely to rely on financial reporting for their information about a firm. Finally, the study differentiates between city- and national-level industry expertise in examining the role of auditors.

This research has several practical implications. First, firms seeking to raise debt capital should consider involving auditors, with either industry expertise or fair value expertise, due to the roles that auditors play in safeguarding the reliability of fair value measures, particularly for Level 3 measurements. Second, from standard-setting and regulatory perspectives, the study’s findings that fair value accounting is associated with higher bond yield spread cast further doubt on the net benefits of applying a full fair value accounting regime. Third, PCAOB may consider enhancing guidance to auditors on Level 2 fair value inputs, to further enhance audit quality. Finally, creditors can be more cautious in interpretating accounting information based on fair value while viewing the employment of auditor experts as a positive signal.

First, the paper extends research on the role of accounting information in public debt contracting. Second, this study adds to the auditing literature about the impact of industry expertise. Finally, and more generally, this study adds to the ongoing controversy on the application of fair value accounting.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure, corporate governance and financial analysts’ information environment, as proxied by their ability to forecast a firm’s earnings. Hence, we extend prior voluntary disclosure research.

Our paper considers that the determination of CSR disclosure, corporate governance and financial analyst forecasting work are closely intertwined. Therefore, we rely on simultaneous equations to explore these relations.

Findings show that there is a direct relation between both CSR disclosure and corporate governance and financial analysts’ information environment: more disclosure and better governance translate into a tighter consensus in earnings forecasts as well as less dispersion. However, corporate governance substitutes for CSR disclosure in improving analyst forecast precision, thus supporting a comprehensive view of corporate governance that encompasses disclosure. Finally, results also suggest that CSR disclosure, through its effect on governance and analyst following, has an indirect influence on analyst forecast precision. Overall, it appears that both CSR disclosure and good corporate governance attract analysts and improve their ability to forecast earnings.

To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to investigate the joint effect of corporate governance and CSR disclosure on analyst forecast precision.