企业环境信息披露的理论基础透视

环境污染是目前人类遇到的最大挑战,而造成环境污染的主要原因则是企业的工业污染,对企业的环境信息进行披露是当前环境保护的一大法宝。从环境信息披露动机来看,有强制披露和自愿披露两种。但不论是何种动机,其表象之后有着深厚的理论基础。目前政府强制要求污染企业披露环境信息,其理论依据源于一是环境规制理论;二是环境公共信托理论。环境规制源于对环境问题的市场失灵,而环境公共信托理论则强调环境资源“万民共有”的法理。此外,企业会采取自愿披露环境信息的策略,其理论依据也有两点：一是利益相关者理论;二是组织合法性理论。利益相关者对环境信息的需求是推动企业主动披露环境信息的外在动力,而企业自愿披露环境信息的内在动力,则是为了获得组织合法性。     

企业社会责任信息披露指标体系的构建

社会责任越来越受到经济社会的重视,如何计量和报告企业所承担的社会责任情况,成为了会计学科里一个新的研究热点,在分析和比较国外社会责任信息披露现状的基础上,结合国内的实际情况,参考了全球报告倡议组织（GRI）评价体系,试图从经济、社会、环境三个角度出发,分为六大类二十七小类构建出适合我国国情的企业社会责任信息披露指标体系。     

The Interpretation of Information and Corporate Disclosure Strategies

This paper analyzes a setting in which a firm's manager can credibly disclose facts, but not their valuation implications. Consequently, he is uncertain as to how those disclosed facts will be interpreted by investors. Introducing such uncertainty affects the manager's disclosure strategy in two important ways. First, it becomes a function of the market's prior valuation of the firm since that valuation provides a clue as to how future disclosures are likely to be interpreted by investors. Second, the disclosure strategy is no longer characterized, in general, by a single good news/bad news partition of the manager's private information.     

Quality of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure and Cost of Equity Capital: Lessons from China

This article explores the relationship between the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and the cost of equity capital by analyzing the financial data and CSR reports of A-share listed firms in China from 2008 to 2014. The quality of the CSR disclosure is shown to be negatively related to the cost of equity capital of the listed firms. This negative correlation proves to be more prominent among firms of environmentally sensitive industries. Taking the ownership of the listed firms into consideration, it is further confirmed that the negative relationship between the CSR disclosure and the cost of equity capital is of higher significance for state-owned enterprises. Our findings also empirically demonstrate that the quality of CSR disclosure is more negatively related to the cost of equity capital among the large listed firms than the smaller ones.     

我国金融资产管理公司信息披露研究

随着金融改革的不断推进和市场的全面对外开放,我国金融资产管理公司作为商业化转型中的政策性国有金融企业,其信息披露不仅在开放的市场中不可或缺,而且也关系到其自身的经营绩效和后续发展。我国金融资产管理公司应充分认识到信息披露的意义,剖析现有信息披露制度的缺陷,通过各方共同努力提升信息披露水平。     

A New Measure of Disclosure Quality: The Level of Disaggregation of Accounting Data in Annual Reports

We construct a new, parsimonious, measure of disclosure quality—disaggregation quality (DQ)—and offer validation tests. DQ captures the level of disaggregation of accounting data through a count of nonmissing Compustat line items, and reflects the extent of details in firms’ annual reports. Conceptually, DQ differs from existing disclosure measures in that it captures the “fineness” of data and is based on a comprehensive set of accounting line items in annual reports. Unlike existing measures, which are usually applicable for a subset of firms or are based on a subset of information items, DQ can be generated for the universe of Compustat industrial firms. We conduct three sets of validation tests by examining DQ's association with variables predicted by prior literature to be associated with information quality. DQ is negatively (positively) associated with analyst forecast dispersion (accuracy) and negatively associated with bid‐ask spreads and cost of equity. These associations continue to hold after we control for firm fundamentals. Taken together, results from this battery of validation tests are consistent with our measure capturing disclosure quality.     

Environmental and Social Matters in Mandatory Corporate Reporting: An Academic Note

This note provides an overview of mandatory corporate reporting for environmental and social matters in Canada, the United States and the EU. When researchers and educators consider reporting on these matters, they often look to voluntary corporate reporting. However, we argue that a lot of related information exists in companies’ mandatory reports, either in the disclosures dictated by securities regulators, or via other required channels. Our objective is threefold. First, to describe what currently exists regarding mandatory reporting on environmental and social matters (to inform). Second, to discuss several of the current ongoing debates regarding such reporting (to encourage discourse). Third, to encourage research into the mandatory reporting of environmental and social matters.     

Disclosure Regulation and Corporate Acquisitions

This paper examines the effect of disclosure regulation on the takeover market. We study the implementation of a recent European regulation that imposes tighter disclosure requirements regarding the financial and ownership information on public firms. We find a substantial drop in the number of control acquisitions after the implementation of the regulation, a decrease that is concentrated in countries with more dynamic takeover markets. Consistent with the idea that the disclosure requirements increased acquisition costs, we also observe that, under the new disclosure regime, target (acquirer) stock returns around the acquisition announcement are higher (lower), and toeholds are substantially smaller. Overall, our evidence suggests that tighter disclosure requirements can impose significant acquisition costs on bidders and thus slow down takeover activity.     

Disclosure of Private Information and Reduction of Uncertainty: Environmental Liabilities in the Chemical Industry

We investigate the potential uncertainty-reducing role of accounting information in the context of contingent Superfund liability valuation. We first develop theoretical arguments for the way reduction of uncertainty regarding these contingent liabilities is expected to affect security prices. Empirical proxies are developed for two types of uncertainty surrounding contingent Superfund liabilities: site uncertainty and allocation uncertainty. In a valuation framework, we then investigate whether financial statement disclosures and accruals reduce uncertainty and thereby affect security valuation. Specifically, we analyze the interaction of private information contained in firm disclosures and accruals with inherent uncertainty surrounding contingent Superfund liabilities. Results suggest that in a regulatory environment allowing substantial reporting discretion, firm-provided financial statement information affects valuation of contingent Superfund liabilities by reducing uncertainty. Further, we find that information revealed through accruals versus disclosures is differentially effective at reducing site and allocation uncertainty.     

企业社会责任报告传递信息效度研究

通过分析国内上市公司2012年发布的社会责任报告与公司社会绩效的相关性来揭示社会责任报告反映信息的有效性,从而考察上市公司社会责任报告的质量水平。实证结果表明：上市公司社会责任报告与社会绩效之间存在显著关系,但社会绩效变量对社会责任报告水平解释能力较弱,表明上市公司社会责任报告存在一定的虚构内容。政府部门应加强监管,使企业社会责任行为落到实处。为认识我国上市公司履行社会责任提供了新的视角和经验证据,对于促进上市公司提高社会责任信息披露水平、积极履行社会责任具有现实意义。     

Environmental Regulations and Social Norms

The evidence suggests that a surprisingly large number of firms comply with pollution standards even though expected penalties for non-compliance are quite low. This paper establishes an environmental social norm model that embodies collective environmental actions among firms. It provides a plausible explanation for these puzzling empirical findings. In this social norm framework, we also explore how the extrinsic pricing incentive affects the intrinsic environmental morale among firms. By taking into account the crowding-out effect of pricing incentives, we show that pollution taxes may not be an effective tool in fighting pollution.     

董事会秘书与信息披露质量

2006年实施的新《公司法》从法律意义上第一次确认了董事会秘书的高管地位,董秘能否提高上市公司的信息披露质量值得深入研究。本文运用Kim和Verrecchia(2001)度量信息披露质量的方法,通过对沪深300指数成份股公司进行实证分析发现:新《公司法》实施后我国上市公司的信息披露质量得到了显著提高;董秘持股会降低信息披露质量,而董秘的年龄、任职时间、教育水平、兼任情况和相关经验等对信息披露质量没有显著影响,这说明董秘的个人特征还没有很好地发挥作用,董秘制度的实施还有待进一步完善。     

Heterogeneity of Funds and Information Disclosure: Evidence

Institutional investors, especially public funds, play an important role in governing listed firms as they grow in Chinese stock markets. We classify each fund as “dedicated,” “transient,” or “mixed,” according to the concentration, turnover, and profit sensitivity of their stock holdings. We find that listed firms with more shares held by dedicated funds have a higher disclosure quality, while firms with more shares held by transient funds have a lower disclosure quality. These findings are consistent in different model settings. In addition, dedicated funds improve the disclosure quality of non-state-owned enterprises more than state-owned enterprises. Dedicated funds can benefit from the lower debt-financing cost and higher stock liquidity of firms with better disclosure quality.     

Voluntary Disclosure of Nonproprietary Information: A Complete Equilibrium Characterization

The so-called disclosure principle is a 'puzzle' in the accounting literature: Game theoretic models of financial markets show that in equilibrium firms should disclose all their private information. Yet, the result is not convincing. Researchers have therefore built sophisticated models in order to demonstrate for which reasons the disclosure principle might fail. This note shows that even in the original model there are multiple equilibria. In those equilibria good types disclose and bad types do not. The commonly known full disclosure equilibrium is a limit point of the equilibrium set.     

Current Trends within Social and Environmental Accounting Research: A Literature Review

Given the recent rise in the evolution and maturity of social and environmental accounting (SEA) research and scholarship, we provide a literature review of the current trends within this area in a concise and harmonized manner for a wider audience in academia and practice. More specifically, we visit the current state of scholarly work, which can be useful in facilitating future research questions and further development of SEA research associated with relations between corporate social performance (CSP), corporate social disclosure (CSD), and corporate financial performance (CFP). Our goal is to offer insights to the current state of SEA research that is informative to both novice and expert SEA scholars, with the hope to promote and stimulate further advancement of research in this particular area. Drawing knowledge from relevant disciplines such as accounting, management, finance, and economics, this article visits the current trends within SEA research in terms of definition, research topics, theoretical viewpoints, methodological approaches, as well as suggestions for future research.     

上市公司信息披露内部性的经济分析及实证检验

由于上市公司与股东之间交易合同的明确程度受限,公司信息生成与信息披露这一期间市场异常收益的产权没能得到明确界定,所以信息占优的上市公司管理层就会通过故意延迟信息披露攫取这部分产权未被界定的收益,这就是上市公司信息披露的内部性现象。本文以上市公司年报公告这一事件为例,通过理论模型推导和实证检验两种方法证实了其内部性的存在,以期对证券市场监管部门的信息披露监管选择和侧重提供参考。     

交易透明度与信息揭示制度：国际趋势与启示

由于经济文化环境、交易制度、市场结构，技术模式和投资者分布等方面的差异，不同交易所在交易信息揭示的种类，数量和程度方面有所区别。本文首先总结了采取指令驱动的主要交易所的交易信息揭示制度和市场透明度，在比基础上分析了交易所交易信息揭示制度变革与市场透明度的发展趋势．希望能对我国证券市场交易信息揭示制度的发展提供一点有益的借鉴和启示。     

Shareholder Litigation and Corporate Disclosure: Evidence from Derivative Lawsuits

Using the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws in the United States, we study the effect of shareholder litigation risk on corporate disclosure. We find that disclosure significantly increases after UD laws make it more difficult to file derivative lawsuits. Specifically, firms issue more earnings forecasts and voluntary 8‐K filings, and increase the length of management discussion and analysis (MD&A) in their 10‐K filings. We further assess the direct and indirect channels through which UD laws affect firms' disclosure policies. We find that the effect of UD laws on corporate disclosure is driven by firms facing relatively higher ex ante derivative litigation risk and higher operating uncertainty, as well as firms for which shareholder litigation is a more important mechanism to discipline managers.     

上市公司主动信息披露行为的博弈分析

本文从同业竞争的简单博弈模型出发进行分析,得出了上市公司主动披露"好消息"但不主动披露"坏消息"的结论.而后,对市场监督机制存在的情况下对上市公司主动信息披露的行为进行博弈分析, 、得出了市场可预测与不可预测情况下上市公司的纳什均衡.最后,对外界监督压力存在的情况进行了博弈分析.上市公司一般会选择主动披露"好消息",但主动披露"坏消息"的行为则随约束条件的不同而变化.增强上市公司的同业竞争,提高上市公司对声誉的依赖性,提高监督效率,降低监督成本,提高监督的覆盖面,对提高上市公司主动信息披露行为会起积极作用.     

Factors Influencing Corporate Environmental Disclosures

We investigate the effectiveness of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a not‐for‐profit organization that facilitates environmental disclosures of firms with institutional investors, thereby serving as a corporate governance mechanism for shareholders to influence the firm's environmental disclosures. We examine firm characteristics associated with firms' decisions to disclose carbon‐related information via the CDP for a sample of 319 Canadian firms over a four‐year period. In particular, we examine how firms' decisions to disclose via CDP are associated with shareholder activism, litigation risk, and the opportunity for low‐cost positive publicity once requested by the firms' “signatory” investors. Our results also show that management's decision to release climate change data is associated with domestic, but not foreign, signatory investors. We also find that disclosing firms tend to be those from lower polluting industries with less exposure to litigation risk. This suggests that this new form of coordinated shareholder activism may not be successful at altering the behavior of firms that are heavier polluters.