ESG信息披露、媒体监督与企业融资约束

ESG信息披露包含企业环境保护、社会责任履行和公司治理状况等内容,关乎企业的可持续发展。ESG信息披露能否有效缓解企业融资约束难题,媒体监督对两者关系是否存在调节效应是值得研究的主题。文章在理论分析了ESG信息披露对企业融资约束的影响,以及媒体监督在其中调节作用基础上,运用2011-2020年度中国上市公司的相关数据,基于媒体监督视角实证检验了ESG信息披露与企业融资约束间的关系。研究发现：ESG信息披露能显著缓解企业融资约束,媒体监督能进一步缓解ESG信息披露与企业融资约束间的关系,媒体积极报道能够提升 ESG信息披露对企业融资约束的缓解效应;进一步异质性分析表明,ESG信息披露的融资约束缓解效应在非国有企业、处于成长期或成熟期的企业、新《环保法》实施后、自愿披露社会责任的企业中表现得更加显著。     

Discretion in Financial Reporting: The Voluntary Disclosure of Compensation Peer Groups in Proxy Statement Performance Graphs*

We examine the 49 Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 firms that voluntarily disclosed in their 1993 proxy statements, the composition of the comparison group used by each board's compensation committee to set executive compensation policies. We hypothesize that the net benefits of this disclosure are largest when (1) there is a high degree of stakeholder concern about compensation, (2) compensation policies are defensible, and (3) corporate governance is strong. Consistent with our stakeholder concern prediction, disclosing firms have higher compensation levels and are more apt to have received prior shareholder proposals about executive compensation. Contrary to this prediction, we find a negative association between financial press coverage of compensation policies and the probability of disclosure. Additionally, the disclosure decision is unrelated to the defensibility of compensation policies and the firm's corporate governance profile. Industry-adjusted firm performance, managerial entrenchment, CEO tenure, institutional holdings, and compensation committee independence variables are insignificant. We also compare the financial performance and compensation practices of compensation peers to two yardsticks — performance and pay practices at the sample firms and the corresponding S&P industry index firms. The compensation levels of compensation peers exceed those of the firms in the corresponding S&P industry indexes. Because (1) compensation levels and performance sensitivities at sample firms are more similar to those at compensation peers than to those at S&P industry index firms, and (2) the superior financial performance and higher performance sensitivities of disclosing firms justify high pay, this evidence suggests that the compensation peers of disclosing firms are an appropriate comparison group.     

ESG 表现与企业风险承担——基于A 股的实证研究

本文以2012-2022 年沪深A 股公司为样本,实证研究ESG 表现与企业风险承担的关系。研究发现,良好的ESG 表现提升了企业的风险承担水平,且分项的检验结果表明,E（环境）、S（社会）与G（治理）因素均对风险承担水平的提升具有促进作用。进一步研究发现,ESG 提升企业风险承担水平的效应主要在资源获取较为困难的企业主体中更为显著,具体表现为当企业处于弱竞争地位、高竞争强度的市场中,且受融资约束的水平较高,产权性质为非国有时,ESG 表现的积极反馈提升了其风险承担水平。本文研究结论对监管机构进一步完善ESG 披露框架、规范披露要求、通过政策引导充分激发企业履行ESG 责任的积极性与主动性提供了一定的启示。     

The Spillover Effect of SEC Comment Letters on Qualitative Corporate Disclosure: Evidence from the Risk Factor Disclosure

In this study we use the recently mandated risk factor disclosure to examine the spillover effect of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) review of qualitative corporate disclosure. We find that firms not receiving any comment letter (“No‐letter Firms”) modify their subsequent year's disclosures to a larger extent if the SEC has commented on the risk factor disclosure of (i) the industry leader, (ii) a close rival, or (iii) numerous industry peers. We refer to this effect as “spillover.” Further, we find that after SEC comments on the industry leader's disclosure, No‐letter Firms also provide more firm‐specific disclosures in the subsequent year. The increased disclosure specificity reduces these firms’ likelihood of receiving SEC risk disclosure comments on their new filings. Our evidence suggests an indirect effect of the SEC review of qualitative disclosure.     

Management Influence on Investors: Evidence from Shareholder Votes on the Frequency of Say on Pay

The literature on shareholder voting has mostly focused on the influence of proxy advisors on shareholder votes. We exploit a unique empirical setting enabling us to provide a direct estimate of management's influence. Analyzing shareholder votes on the frequency of future say on pay (SOP) votes, we find that a management recommendation for a particular frequency is associated with a 26 percent increase in voting support for that frequency. Additional tests suggest that the documented association is likely to capture a causal effect. Management influence varies across firms and is smaller at firms where perceived management credibility is lower. Compared to firms adopting an annual frequency, firms following management's recommendation to adopt a triennial frequency are significantly less likely to change their compensation practices in response to an adverse SOP vote, consistent with the notion that a less frequent vote results in lower management accountability.     

ESG披露对企业违规行为的影响研究

环境、社会和公司治理又称ESG(environmental, social and governance)作为新兴企业报告体系,在经济市场中发挥不可或缺的治理作用。以2009—2022年中国A股上市公司为研究样本,通过实证分析揭示了ESG披露对企业违规行为的作用,并进一步检验了在不同行业竞争程度以及媒体监督程度下的异质性影响。研究结果表明,ESG披露对企业违规行为具有抑制作用;行业竞争程度更高、受更强媒体监督的企业,ESG披露对企业违规行为的作用更强。     

发行绿色债券与企业ESG 表现：来自中国的机制与实证发现

本文以绿色债券为切入点,研究其发行与企业ESG 得分之间的相互关系,解释企业ESG 目标实现的多个触发因素和努力动机。本文从CSMAR 国泰安等数据库中收集并筛选了5737 个观测样本,利用双重差分等计量经济学模型,发现绿色债券发行与企业ESG 评分的提升存在较强的相关性,且这种效应在国有企业、高环境规制地区和低人均工业GDP 地区更显著。机制研究发现,环境信息披露的改善、管理者短视的减少和分析师关注均为正向中介变量。最后,绿色债券发行对企业的财务状况具有积极影响。     

Corporate Disclosure of Environmental Liability Information: Theory and Evidence*

Abstract. The decision to disclose information concerning a firm's environmental liabilities is modeled as a sequential game involving the firm, a capital market, and outside stakeholders who can impose proprietary (political) costs on the firm. A partial disclosure equilibrium is derived in which firms reveal information strategically, maximizing the share-value net of expected political costs. Inherent uncertainty regarding the existence and size of the liabilities creates a setting where outsiders are uncertain if management is informed about these liabilities, so firms can plausibly withhold “bad news”, that is, they do not disclose liabilities that exceed a threshold level. Three novel hypotheses are that a firm is more likely to disclose as (1) its pollution propensity increases, (2) outsiders' knowledge of its environmental liabilities increases, and (3) the risk of incurring proprietary costs decreases. Empirical support is found for the hypotheses, based on the accounting disclosures made by sample firms selected from the records of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Energy. Improved accounting and auditing standards for environmental disclosure would build on at least three implications of the study:

• 1 To the extent that inherent uncertainty leaves managers with discretion as to what to disclose, the partial disclosure equilibrium result suggests that not all firms will comply with disclosure standards.
• 2 Publishing broad environmental performance indicators for companies in nonaccounting outlets would increase public awareness of a manager's private information endowment, making voluntary accounting disclosures of the liabilities more likely.
• 3 If a significant decline in stakeholder tolerance of pollution occurs, the expected proprietary costs of disclosing increase, and companies become less likely to disclose.

     

Disclosure Policy and Market Liquidity: Impact of Depth Quotes and Order Sizes*

This paper investigates the relation between disclosure policy and market liquidity. Our tests examine two key aspects of market liquidity, the effective bid‐ask spread and quoted depth, and how they relate to financial analysts' ratings of firms' disclosure policies. We introduce a method of combining order sizes and depth quotes to yield more precise estimates of effective spreads on trades likely constrained by quoted depth. We find that while firms with higher rated disclosures are charged lower effective spreads, they are also quoted lower depth, consistent with the notion that better disclosures reduce information asymmetry but also cause some liquidity suppliers to exit the market. Therefore, a simple examination of spreads and depths yields ambiguous inferences on the relation between disclosure policy and market liquidity. We resolve this ambiguity by estimating depth‐adjusted effective spreads, and find that firms with higher rated disclosures have lower depth‐adjusted effective spreads across all trade sizes. Consequently, our results reveal a robust inverse relation between disclosure ratings and effective trading costs. This implies that a policy of enhanced financial disclosure is related to improved market liquidity.     

Accounting Policy Disclosures and Analysts' Forecasts

Using an international sample, I investigate whether the extent of firms' disclosure of their accounting policies in the annual report is associated with properties of analysts' earnings forecasts. Controlling for firm‐ and country‐level variables, I find that the level of accounting policy disclosure is significantly negatively related to forecast dispersion and forecast error. In particular, I find that accounting policy disclosures are incrementally useful to analysts over and above all other annual report disclosures. These findings suggest that accounting policy disclosures reduce uncertainty about forecasted earnings. I find univariate but not multivariate support for the hypothesis that accounting policy disclosures are especially helpful to analysts in environments where firms can choose among a larger set of accounting methods.     

石化行业上市公司ESG报告信息披露探究

2018年修改的《上市公司治理准则》明确要求上市公司在公司治理中贯彻落实绿色、开放发展观,并确立ESG信息披露框架。目前证监会对上市公司ESG信息披露持鼓励态度,随着可持续发展在国内的逐步推进,可以预料未来上市公司披露ESG报告是大势所趋。石化行业作为经济支柱,业内上市公司应尽早关注ESG发展,部署可持续发展战略,将ESG建设纳入企业管理并定期发布ESG报告。通过收集2018—2020年深沪上市的石化行业上市公司ESG披露信息,分析ESG在石化行业上市公司中的披露情况,探寻企业在披露ESG报告中存在的问题,并提出相应对策,为石化行业上市公司ESG报告规范披露提供参考。     

The Impact of Mandated Disclosure on Performance‐Based CEO Compensation*

Regulators argue that mandated compensation disclosure improves corporate governance by permitting shareholders to enjoin boards of directors to reward executives in ways that are consistent with shareholder value creation. We posit that mandated compensation disclosure, or the absence thereof, has a greater impact on the CEO compensation practices of widely held firms than of closely held firms. More specifically, we expect that, in the absence of mandated disclosure, CEO compensation is likely to be less performance‐contingent among widely held firms than among closely held firms. Moreover, we also expect that the advent of mandated disclosure leads widely held firms to increase the extent to which CEO compensation is performance‐contingent, much more so than closely held firms would. We use a unique data base resulting from the Ontario Securities Commission amendment of regulation 638 in October 1993. For the first time, this amendment required firms listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange to provide detailed executive compensation data similar to those required by the Securities and Exchange Commission, for the current year as well as retroactively for the previous two years. We find that, in the absence of mandated disclosure, CEO cash compensation in widely held firms is less performance‐contingent than in closely held firms. With the imposition of mandated disclosure, performance‐contingent cash compensation increases more in widely held firms than in closely held firms. Results with respect to stock option grants are mixed, with both closely held and widely held firms reacting to the advent of mandated disclosure.     

Trading Prior to the Disclosure of Material Information: Evidence from Regulation Fair Disclosure Form 8‐Ks*

Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) Form 8‐K filings provide a venue where managers release information to the market as a whole that they designate as being material. Using this setting, we study trading patterns immediately prior to the public disclosure of material information. We offer three main results. First, using both intraday and daily trading data, we find abnormal trading volume of 21 percent (13 percent) in the hour (day) prior to the public disclosure, respectively. Second, we find that this pre‐disclosure abnormal trading volume is concentrated in firms that are smaller, have more growth opportunities, issue fewer voluntary disclosures, and have weaker external monitoring. Finally, we find that this pre‐disclosure volume is concentrated in subsamples in which the information relates to a firm's material contracts, a firm holds investor/analyst conferences, and there is insider trading activity in a firm's shares. Our results do not concentrate in a small number of firms or industries, and do not appear to be explained by the form through which managers first release the material information (e.g., Form 8‐K, press release, website posting, or social media). Our results are also robust to controlling for the firm's other filings and peer filings that occur around the disclosure. Overall, the trading patterns we document may show that, inconsistent with the spirit of Reg FD, a subset of investors trade on information managers deem material prior to its broad, public release.     

Customer Concentration and Public Disclosure: Evidence from Management Earnings and Sales Forecasts

This study examines the association between customer base concentration and corporate public disclosure policy. When the customer base is more concentrated, large customers face lower costs of accessing the supplier firm's private information, reducing customers' overall demand for the supplier's public information, suggesting a negative association between customer concentration and the amount of public disclosure. Alternatively, large customers have greater bargaining power and may demand that the supplier firm provide more public disclosures. Consistent with customer concentration facilitating private information flow from the supplier to customers, we find that the frequencies of management earnings and sales forecasts are negatively associated with customer concentration among firms with major corporate customers. These associations are stronger when the supplier and customers are engaged in more relationship-specific investments, when customers' private information acquisition costs are lower, and when it is less costly for customers to find another supplier.     

民营企业政治网络战略与社会责任信息披露——来自中国上市公司社会责任报告的经验证据

目前,有关企业社会责任信息披露的文献,对企业政治网络战略与社会责任信息披露行为的关系探讨很少。文章选取2009-2012年A股民营上市公司自愿披露的社会责任报告作为研究样本,实证分析民营企业政治网络战略对社会责任信息披露的影响。在控制了民营企业的组织因素及企业家个体人力资本控制变量后发现,政治关系网络、协会关系网络均对民营企业社会责任报告披露倾向和社会责任信息披露水平有显著的正向影响。文章一方面为理解转型经济情景下民营企业社会责任信息披露的动机提供了新的视角,另一方面为政府引导民营企业履行社会责任提供了启示。     

The Voluntary Inclusion of Forecasts in the MD&A Section of Annual Reports*

Abstract. In this study, we appeal to theories advanced by Darrough and Stoughton (1990) to enhance our understanding of why some firms may voluntarily include directional forecasts in their annual reports while others do not. The data are consistent with their predictions that a firm's disclosure policy reflects its concern for both financial market valuation and product market competition. We find that for “good news firms, the probability of forecasting is increasing in the financing requirements but decreasing in the threat of competitor entry. The converse holds for “bad news” firms. These results lend further empirical support to the observation that the familiar good news hypothesis tested in the management earnings forecast literature offers only a partial explanation for the decision to forecast. Interestingly, however, even after controlling for financial and product market considerations, an overall voluntary disclosure bias still exists in the data. The data also provide support for the OSC's concern about a voluntary disclosure bias. Only 17.5 percent of our sample forecasts represent revisions downward relative to the previous year's results. However, in contrast to the OSC's concern about a general lack of forward-looking disclosures in annual reports, 35.9 percent of our sample firms include directional forecasts in their MD&A or elsewhere in the annual report.     

Dynamic Information Disclosure

We explore the optimal timing of voluntary disclosures when firms and outside investors have correlated but not identical signals. By delaying disclosure of their signal, firms encourage the acquisition of information by investors by reducing the latter's exposure to the long‐term risk of holding the asset. Immediate disclosure reduces rents from acquiring the correlated signal, and thus is sometimes suboptimal in a dynamic setting. We characterize conditions under which postponing disclosure is preferable, which allows us to develop predictions on the timing of voluntary information disclosures such as management guidance.     

Improving Financial Reports by Revealing the Accuracy of Prior Estimates*

Several researchers (e.g., Lundholm 1999; Ryan 1997; Petroni, Ryan, and Wahlen 2000) have proposed a reporting mechanism to enhance the reliability of estimates and other forward‐looking information in financial reports. Their proposals require companies to report reconciliations of prior‐year estimates to actual realizations as supplemental information in their financial reports. Such disclosures would enable investors to distinguish between accurate and opportunistic reporting behavior, and, arguably, should create incentives for companies to estimate accurately in the first place. Our study provides evidence on these proposals. Specifically, we conduct two experiments within the context of an important intangible asset requiring estimation ‐ software development costs. Our results show that the proposed reporting mechanism is effective in communicating information about the accuracy of financial estimates. We find, however, that not all disclosures are equally useful. The most effective disclosures explicitly describe the implications of misestimation (if any) on both the balance sheet and on earnings, thereby reducing the computational complexity associated with less explicit disclosures. Furthermore, our results show that when the disclosures explicitly describe the implications of misestimation, investors reward accurate estimators but do not explicitly punish those who are inaccurate. We conclude that information about previous estimate accuracy is useful to investors and that regulators should consider the type of disclosure, because not all disclosures may be equally effective in creating management incentives for accurate estimation. Moreover, the competitive advantage conferred on firms that provide accurate estimates arguably should create incentives for all companies to estimate accurately in the future.     

Green policy and corporate social responsibility: Empirical analysis of the Green Credit Guidelines in China

In the past four decades, several countries have imposed environmental regulations to enforce green policy and corporate reduction of industrial emissions and waste. Unlike other environmental regulations, China's Green Credit Guidelines internalize firms' environmental risks into a loan channel; firms with high environmental credit risks encounter high barriers to obtaining loans. To investigate whether, and to what extent, this approach promotes corporate social responsibility, we introduce a Modified Environmental, Social, Governance (MESG) index that uses disaggregated firm-level data to measure the level of engagement in corporate social responsibility. We find that, after the promulgation of the Green Credit Guidelines, there was a significant increase in social responsibility in firms restricted by the Guidelines relative to firms not restricted by the Guidelines.     

提升纺织企业节能减排水平的财税政策研究——以浙江省为例

在实地调研基础上总结了影响浙江纺织企业节能减排的资源、环境、经济与社会因素,分析了浙江纺织企业节能减排的困境及其财税政策的不足,提出了促进浙江纺织企业节能减排的财政支出政策与税收政策的建议:在财政支出政策的选择上应注重综合运用政府直接投资、政府采购、财政补贴和转移支付等手段;在税收政策的选择上应综合运用税收优惠政策、差别性的环保税、产品税和消费税政策等。