IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/28984.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Real Effects of Mandatory CSR Disclosure on Emissions: Evidence from the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program

Author

Listed:
  • Lavender Yang
  • Nicholas Z. Muller
  • Pierre Jinghong Liang

Abstract

We examine the real effects of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) on electric power plants in the United States. Starting in 2010, the GHGRP requires both the reporting of greenhouse gas emissions by facilities emitting more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year to the Environmental Protection Agency and the public dissemination of the reported data in a comprehensive and accessible manner. Using a difference-in-difference research design, we find that power plants that are subject to the GHGRP reduced carbon dioxide emission rates by 7%. The effect is stronger for plants owned by publicly traded firms. We detect evidence of strategic behavior by firms that own both GHGRP plants and non-GHGRP plants. Such firms strategically reallocate emissions between plants to reduce GHGRP-disclosed emissions. We interpret this as evidence that the program is costly to the affected firms. Our results offer new evidence that public or shareholder pressure is a primary channel through which mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting programs affect firm behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Lavender Yang & Nicholas Z. Muller & Pierre Jinghong Liang, 2021. "The Real Effects of Mandatory CSR Disclosure on Emissions: Evidence from the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program," NBER Working Papers 28984, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28984
    Note: EEE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w28984.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xiao Lin & Kyeonghee Kim & Anastasia Ivantsova, 2023. "Insights from the mandatory insurer climate risk disclosure survey in the United States," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 26(1), pages 107-118, March.
    2. Vazquez, Antonio B. & Martinez, Sofia, 2022. "Mandatory ESG Reporting and Corporate Performance," Misum Working Paper Series 2022-5, Stockholm School of Economics, Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets (Misum), revised 30 Jan 2023.
    3. Shangen Li, 2024. "Optimal Design of Climate Disclosure Policies: Transparency versus Externality," Papers 2402.11961, arXiv.org.
    4. Earnhart, Dietrich & Germeshausen, Robert & von Graevenitz, Kathrine, 2022. "Effects of information-based regulation on financial outcomes: Evidence from the European Union's public emission registry," ZEW Discussion Papers 22-015, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • L21 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Business Objectives of the Firm
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • M41 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Accounting
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28984. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.