The market value of decomposed carbon emissions

We introduce the decomposition of carbon emissions into an expected and an unexpected component and analyze the association between these components and firm value. The expected component captures a firm's average carbon emissions inherent to its business model and operating environment. The unexpected component, meaning the firm-specific deviation from expected carbon emissions, reflects the management's effort and ability to implement carbon management and actively influence carbon emissions. For a sample of US firms operating in carbon-intensive industries, we estimate the expected component using a regression of carbon emissions on firm characteristics and industry. The residual of this regression represents the unexpected component. The results reveal that, on average, investors attach value to both components. While investors consider the expected component to be relevant regardless of assurance, they consider the unexpected component to be more relevant in the presence of assurance. The assurance alleviates credibility concerns about the information content of the unexpected component. Additionally, we confirm the nomological validity of our measure of the unexpected component, as it is negatively related to indicators of better carbon management systems.     

碳排放许可权问题的国际进展与启示

气候变暖是目前人类面临的重大挑战之一,过去一百多年的经济发展,伴随而来的是人为破坏而导致的地球加速升温.而人类要阻止这场可怕的灾难,必须采取坚决的行动,那就是减少碳排放量.本文拟就近年来有关碳排放许可权问题的国际研究与工作情况作一介绍.     

The impact of carbon disclosure mandates on emissions and financial operating performance

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine the impact of a disclosure mandate for greenhouse gas emissions on firms’ subsequent emission levels and financial operating performance. For...     

The effects of board characteristics and sustainable compensation policy on carbon performance of UK firms

This study examines the effects of board characteristics and sustainable compensation policy on carbon reduction initiatives and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of a firm. We use firm fixed effect model to analyse data from 256 non-financial UK firms covering a period of 13 years (2002–2014). Our estimation results suggest that board independence and board gender diversity have positive associations with carbon reduction initiatives. In addition, environment-social-governance based compensation policy is found to be positively associated with carbon reduction initiatives. However, we do not find any relationship between corporate governance variables and GHG emissions of a firm. Overall, our evidence suggests that corporate boards and executive management tend to focus on a firm's process-oriented carbon performance, without improving actual carbon performance in the form of reduced GHG emissions. The findings have important implications for practitioners and policymakers with respect to the effectiveness of internal corporate governance mechanisms in addressing climate change risks, and possible linkage between corporate governance reform and carbon related policies.     

An equitable,efficient and implementable scheme to control global carbon dioxide emissions

We design an international scheme to control global externalities in which autonomous regions choose their own emissions levels in anticipation of interregional resource transfers implemented by an international agency. This agency follows a proportional equity principle, which preserves the status-quo ratio of regional welfare levels. We show that it is individually rational for each region to participate in the proposed international scheme and that regional environmental authorities choose policies that fully internalize the global externality. Although based on an admittedly ideal scheme, these results are especially noteworthy in light of the call for various forms of transfers in international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol. JEL Code: C72 · D62 · D78 · H41 · H77 · Q28     

How does fintech influence carbon emissions: Evidence from China's prefecture-level cities

We investigate how fintech development affects carbon emissions using the panel data of 253 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2019. We employ the city-level digital financial inclusion index to gauge the fintech development and identify the impact mechanisms through which fintech affects the city's carbon emissions. Our results show that fintech can significantly reduce carbon emissions, and this conclusion still holds when considering potential endogeneity, when considering the impact of resource endowment, when using alternative measures of carbon emissions, even after removing the impact of low-carbon pilot cities policy, and after winsorization treatment. We further find that the main mechanisms by which fintech affects carbon emissions are industrial structure, financing constraints, and green technology innovation. Our results provide powerful evidence that fintech positively impacts the real economy, offering more confidence and reason to stimulate fintech development.     

Complicated firms

We exploit a novel setting in which the same piece of information affects two sets of firms: one set of firms requires straightforward processing to update prices, while the other set requires more complicated analyses to incorporate the same piece of information into prices. We document substantial return predictability from the set of easy-to-analyze firms to their more complicated peers. Specifically, a simple portfolio strategy that takes advantage of this straightforward vs. complicated information processing classification yields returns of 118 basis points per month before transaction costs. Consistent with processing complexity driving the return relation, we further show that the more complicated the firm, the more pronounced the return predictability. In addition, we find that sell-side analysts are subject to these same information processing constraints, as their forecast revisions of easy-to-analyze firms predict their future revisions of more complicated firms.     

Institutional trading and information processing: Evidence from complicated firms and easy-to-analyze firms

In this article, I examine institutional trading within two groups of firms with different demands on investor information processing: conglomerate firms and stand-alone firms. On average, institutional trading in conglomerate firm stocks yields significantly lower returns than institutional trading in stand-alone firm stocks. Inferior returns following institutional trading in conglomerate firm stocks persist across small and large firms. Moreover, financial institutions with a low concentration of conglomerate firms in their portfolios are more profitable in their trading. This study provides evidence that skilled institutional investors intentionally focus their information-processing efforts on easy-to-analyze firms.     

Collusion and heterogeneity of firms

We examine the impact of heterogeneous discounting on collusion in dynamic Bertrand competition. We show exactly when collusion can be sustained and how collusion would be organized efficiently with heterogeneous discounting. First, we show that collusion is possible if and only if the average discount factor exceeds a certain threshold, with or without capacity constraints. Next, we identify a dynamic pattern of market share that characterizes efficient collusion and obtain the unique long‐run prediction despite the presence of multiple equilibria. In the long run, the most patient firm and the most impatient firm tend to dominate the market.     

Tax avoidance in family firms: Evidence from large private firms

Ownership structure plays an important role in firms’ decisions on tax avoidance. Recently, the effect of family ownership on corporate tax avoidance has become an issue of increasing interest among scholars from both the fields of family business research and tax research; however, empirical findings have so far remained ambiguous. Based on a unique sample of 678 large private firms from Germany, we show that for unlisted large firms (i) family firms avoid more tax than non-family firms, (ii) tax avoidance increases with the percentage of family ownership, and (iii) tax avoidance is a function of the number of shareholders. We interpret our results as evidence that benefits from avoiding taxes outweigh the non-tax costs in the case of large private family firms in Germany. Furthermore, as the number of family shareholders increases, family firms satisfy increasing demand for dividends by avoiding taxes.     

Trade costs, firms and productivity

This paper examines the response of U.S. manufacturing industries and plants to changes in trade costs using a unique new dataset on industry-level tariff and transportation rates. Our results lend support to recent heterogeneous-firm models of international trade that predict a reallocation of economic activity towards high-productivity firms as trade costs fall. We find that industries experiencing relatively large declines in trade costs exhibit relatively strong productivity growth. We also find that low-productivity plants in industries with falling trade costs are more likely to die; that relatively high-productivity non-exporters are more likely to start exporting in response to falling trade costs; and that existing exporters increase their shipments abroad as trade costs fall. Finally, we provide evidence of productivity growth within firms in response to decreases in industry-level trade costs.     

Leverage and investment in diversified firms

Within diversified firms, the negative impact of leverage on investment is significantly greater for high q than for low q segments and significantly greater for non-core than for core segments. This differs substantially from focused firms and is consistent with the view that diversified firms allocate a disproportionate share of their debt service burden to their higher q and non-core segments. We also find that, among low-growth firms, the positive relation between leverage and firm value is significantly weaker in diversified firms than in focused firms. We conclude that the disciplinary benefits of debt are partially offset by the additional managerial discretion in allocating debt service that is provided by the diversified organizational structure.     

High-technology development zones and innovation in knowledge-intensive service firms: Evidence from Chinese A-share listed firms

Academic attention has been increasingly focused on the relationship between the practice of development zones and firm innovation. This paper explores the impact effect and mechanism of the establishment of high-tech development zones on the innovation behavior of knowledge-intensive service enterprises using data from A-share listed companies from 2005 to 2019. It is found that the establishment of high-tech development zones has a significant positive effect on the improvement of innovation capability among knowledge-intensive service enterprises. After mitigating the endogeneity problem, considering the sample selection problem, and conducting other robustness tests, the estimation results still support the baseline findings. Meanwhile, the innovation effect of high-tech zone establishment shows significant heterogeneity. Specifically, the impact of high-technology development zone establishment on firms' innovation capacity is most significant among technology service firms. In addition, the effect of high-tech development zone establishment on firms' innovation capability is more significant if the firms are located in national high-tech zones, or the eastern region, or in regions with high openness. Therefore, regions should actively optimize their upgrading and transformation of existing high-tech zones, strengthen the integration between high-tech zones, and actively guide the innovative development of knowledge-intensive service enterprises in high-tech zones.     

Procurement with specialized firms

We analyze optimal procurement mechanisms when firms are specialized. The procurement agency has incomplete information concerning the firms' cost functions and values high quality as well as low price. Lower type firms are cheaper (more expensive) than higher type firms when providing low (high) quality. With specialized firms, distortion is limited and a mass of types earns zero profits. The optimal mechanism can be inefficient: types providing lower second‐best welfare win against types providing higher second‐best welfare. As standard scoring rule auctions cannot always implement the optimal mechanism, we introduce a new auction format implementing the optimal mechanism.     

Valuation of bankrupt firms

This study compares the market value of firms that reorganizein bankruptcy with estimates of value based on management'spublished cash flow projections. We estimate firm values usingmodels that have been shown in other contexts to generate relativelyprecise estimates of value. We find that these methods generallyyield unbiased estimates of value, but the dispersion of valuationerrors is very wide - the sample ratio of estimated value tomarket value varies from less than 20% to greater than 250%.Cross-sectional analysis indicates that the variation in theseerrors is related to empirical proxies for claimholders' incentivesto overstate or understate the firm's value.     

The organizational culture of public accounting firms: evidence from Taiwanese local and US affiliated firms

This study examines the organizational cultures of public accounting firms with data from US affiliated international accounting firms in Taiwan and Taiwanese local firms. Hypotheses are tested about the impact of the national culture of the US firms on their Taiwanese affiliates, and about cultural differences across function and rank. The study extends previous research by (1) examining an oriental country whose culture is significantly different from that of the US, (2) using the Hofstede, G., Neuijen, B., Ohayv, D. D., & Sanders G. (1990). Measuring organizational cultures: a qualitative and quantitative study across twenty cases. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 286–316 practices-based measure of organizational culture, and (3) examining the importance of the fit between employee preferences and organizational culture in influencing organizational commitment, job satisfaction and propensity to remain with the organization. Support is found for the cultural impact and fit hypotheses. Additonally, while culture is found to be relatively homogeneous across function, differences are found across rank.     

Debt financing in private and public firms

Using administrative confidential data on the universe of Canadian corporate firms, we compare debt financing choices of private and public firms. Private firms have higher leverage ratios, which are entirely driven by private firms’ stronger reliance on short-term debt. Further, private firms rely more of leverage during economic expansions, while public firms rely on equity financing. Specifically, private firms manage to increase their long-term debt during expansions, while short-term debt is used during downturns. Our findings have implications for a better understanding of the role of asymmetric information in private firms’ capital structure decisions.     

Information sharing among firms and cyber attacks

As the Sarbanes-Oxley Act strengthens internal controls, and the government encourages information sharing, accounting gains significance through secure representation, storage, and transfer of information, and by laying the foundation for assessing costs and benefits. Information sharing and security investment for two firms are inverse U shaped in the aggregate attack, and interlinked through the interdependence and the firm’s unit cost of security investment. Both increase in the interdependence (e.g. US telecommunications industry). With given security investment, social welfare is inverse U shaped in information sharing. Individual optimization implies free riding. A social planner is introduced controlling information sharing, security investment, or both, in simultaneous and two period games. Two period games where the social planner moves first are realistic when the social planner is highly respected. For the simultaneous game, a social planner controlling information sharing (security investment) imposes unreasonably high sharing (security investment). Firms free ride in the variable they control. The social planner imposes more moderate levels in the two period games. A social planner controlling both information sharing and security investment in a two period game where the social planner moves first is the most beneficial control scenario when the firms’ defense efficiencies are high. If these are sufficiently high, the attack is deterred altogether.     

Efficiency in the UK life insurance industry: Mutual firms versus proprietary firms

The paper discusses the main tenets of stakeholder theory and agency theory and goes on to analyse the relative performance of a sample of 100 mutual and proprietary life insurance companies in the UK during the period 1992–1996. The paper concludes that there is weak evidence to support the contention that mutual life insurers are relatively more cost efficient than proprietary insurers. Mutual companies in the sample perform well relative to proprietary companies in terms of annual surpluses and expenses ratios. There is also evidence that fund managers in mutual companies perform at least as well on average as those in proprietary companies.