Environmental,Social and Governance Reporting in China

What is the current state of environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting and what is the relation between ESG reporting and the financial performance of Chinese companies? This study analyses corporate ESG disclosure in China between 2005 and 2012 by analysing the members of the main indexes of the biggest Chinese stock exchanges. After discussing theories that explain the ESG performance of firms such as institutional theory, accountability and stakeholder theory we present uni‐ and multivariate statistical analyses of ESG reporting and its relation to environmental and financial performance. Our results suggest that ownership status and membership of certain stock exchanges influence the frequency of ESG disclosure. In turn, ESG reporting influences both environmental and financial performance. We conclude that the main driver for ESG disclosure is accountability and that Chinese corporations are catching up with respect to the frequency of ESG reporting as well as with respect to the quality. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Extending design-optimality from an initial model to augmented models

We consider an initial linear model E(Y)=B a and an augmented model E(Y)=B a+C b. We show that, if a design is optimal for estimating K a in the initial model, then there exists a matrix L such that this design is also optimal for estimating K a+L b in the augmented model. Received: December 1998