We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors’ on‐the‐job learning improves firm value up to a [...]
We exploit the Great Recession of 2008 to study how firms view corporate social responsibility (CSR). When confronted with an adverse exogenous shock, firms are forced to prioritize. Our results show that, during the Great Recession, firms do not lessen their overall CSR investments, suggesting that they recognize the importance of CSR. However, further analysis [...]
Unlike previous studies that focus on accrual-based earnings management, this study analyzes real activities manipulation and investigates whether female directors on boards of directors (BoDs) affect managers’ real activities manipulation. Using a large sample of 11,831 firm-year observations from Chinese listed companies from the 2000 to 2011 period, we find that higher female participation on [...]
This study shows that CEO tenure has positive and robust predictive power on cross-sectional stock returns. We show that a hedge portfolio constructed based on CEO tenure yields an annualised alpha of 1.32% and attribute this to seasoned CEOs having greater firm-specific knowledge and experience. Consistent with this explanation, we find that CEO tenure has [...]
“The SDGs present an opportunity for business-led solutions and technologies to be developed and implemented to address the world’s biggest sustainable development challenges,” As noted in the SDG Compass, But if neither the corporate nor its capital providers can accurately and easily interpret information from Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting, is ESG reporting really [...]
The paper analyses the implementation of the EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive in four European Member States: UK, Germany, France and Italy. The first part reviews the main trends, key differences and potential difficulties or unexpected consequences of the Directive. The paper then explores in more detail key substantive elements of the Directive, and how these [...]
This paper examines the role of multinational enterprises in sustainability reporting. The study assesses how multinational enterprise status correlates with a company's average disclosure rate and probability of reporting on economic, labor and social, environmental, and governance indicators. It uses a unique data set that offers company-level information on sustainability reporting from the Global Reporting [...]
This paper not only attempts to survey the burgeoning literature on environmental, social and governance disclosures and performance and their effects on firm value, but its focus also lies on highlighting stylised observations coming from the most recent work that has not yet become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’ in the field. In addition, it [...]
We conduct an experiment to examine investment professionals’ use of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures when making personal investment decisions or investment recommendations to clients. We predict and find that investment professionals are more willing to personally invest and recommend investment to a client when a firm discloses positive CSR performance than when it makes [...]
We examine the value consequences of corporate social responsibility through the lens of institutional shareholders. We find a sharp asymmetry between corporate policies that mitigate the firm’s exposure to environmental risk and those that enhance its perceived environmental friendliness (“greenness”). Institutional investors shun stocks with high environmental risk exposure, which we show have lower valuations [...]
