مشارکت بازنگری شده گزارش های زیست محیطی برای ارزیابی سرمایه گذاران از درآمد شرکت: چشم انداز بین المللی

This paper investigates the impact of environmental reporting on the relationship between a firm's earnings and its stock market value. Our measure of environmental reporting comprises only information that is voluntarily disclosed by firms and which meaning implies specific initiatives or events. To assess how country-specific contexts may affect the impact of environmental reporting, we focus on firms from Canada, France and Germany; three countries that employ different reporting and governance regimes. Our design relies on simultaneous equations to control for the endogeneity between environmental reporting and firm attributes such as size, age of assets, industry membership and public media exposure. Results suggest that decisions to report environmental information have a moderating impact on the stock market valuation of a German firm's earnings. In contrast, environmental reporting does not significantly influence the stock market valuation of Canadian and French firms earnings. Overall, results indicate that in assessing how information released by a firm affects the stock market valuation of its earning

While securities market regulators focus primarily on financial information reporting, investors will assess a firm's financials using regulated and non-regulated disclosure. For instance, Amir and Lev (1996) as well as Botosan and Plumlee (2002) provide evidence showing that investors rely on a firm's non-financial disclosure (e.g. number of new subscribers for wireless firms) to assess how its earnings are to be valued. The value relevance of such non-financial disclosure is consistent with firms often revealing much more about their activities than is required by law. Many executives recognize that a firm's disclosure policies are strategic tools that provide benefits when managed properly (Botosan, 1997, Lev, 1992, Skinner, 1994 and Lang and Lundholm, 1993); the emergence of systematic and proactive investor communications programs are but an illustration of that trend. Prior findings suggest that economic benefits/costs considerations can drive managerial disclosure decisions (e.g., Scott, 1994).

provides descriptive statistics for our sample firms. Sample firms are relatively large and profitable. Levels of environmental reporting vary between countries with Canadian firms reporting the highest level of disclosure (12.5), followed by German (8.4) then French firms (5.4). Environmental management, pollution abatement and environmental expenditures and risks are all important aspects of environmental reporting in all three countries.