Foreign Institutional Investors, Legal Origin, and Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosure

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Authors

The disclosure of corporate environmental performance is an increasingly important element of a firm’s ethical behavior. We analyze how the legal origin of foreign institutional investors affects a firm’s voluntary greenhouse gas emissions disclosure. Using a large sample of firms from 36 countries, we show that foreign institutional ownership from civil law countries improves the scope and quality of a firm’s greenhouse gas emissions reporting. This relation is robust to addressing endogeneity and selection biases. The effect is more pronounced in firms from non-climate-sensitized countries, for which the gap between firms’ environmental standards and investors’ environmental targets is potentially larger, and in less international firms. Firms with a higher level of voluntary greenhouse gas emissions disclosure also exhibit higher valuations.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Business Ethics
Volume182
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)903-932
Number of pages30
ISSN0167-4544
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.02.2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

    Research areas

  • Corporate environmental responsibility, Firm value, Foreign ownership, Greenhouse gas emissions disclosure, Institutional investors, Legal origin
  • Management studies