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Cheap talk and cherry-picking: What ClimateBert has to say on corporate climate risk disclosures

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  • Bingler, Julia Anna
  • Kraus, Mathias
  • Leippold, Markus
  • Webersinke, Nicolas

Abstract

Disclosure of climate-related financial risks greatly helps investors assess companies’ preparedness for climate change. Voluntary disclosures such as those based on the recommendations of the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) are being hailed as an effective measure for better climate risk management. We ask whether this expectation is justified. We do so by training ClimateBERT, a deep neural language model fine-tuned based on the language model BERT. In analyzing the disclosures of TCFD-supporting firms, ClimateBERT comes to the sobering conclusion that the firms’ TCFD support is mostly cheap talk and that firms cherry-pick to report primarily non-material climate risk information.

Suggested Citation

  • Bingler, Julia Anna & Kraus, Mathias & Leippold, Markus & Webersinke, Nicolas, 2022. "Cheap talk and cherry-picking: What ClimateBert has to say on corporate climate risk disclosures," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:47:y:2022:i:pb:s1544612322000897
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.102776
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    Cited by:

    1. Matteo Gasparini & Peter Tufano, 2023. "The Evolving Academic Field of Climate Finance," Harvard Business School Working Papers 23-057, Harvard Business School.
    2. Alexandra Sadler & Nicola Ranger & Sam Fankhauser & Fulvia Marotta & Brian O’Callaghan, 2024. "The impact of COVID-19 fiscal spending on climate change adaptation and resilience," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 270-281, March.
    3. Wang, Yaozhong & He, Pinzhen, 2024. "Enterprise digital transformation, financial information disclosure and innovation efficiency," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    4. Jeanne, Amar & Demaria, Samira & Rigot, Sandra, 2023. "What are the drivers of corporates' climate transparency? Evidence from the S&P 1200 index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    5. Sun, Shuangcheng & Xiao, Xiaoyan, 2024. "Delegation of management authority and the level of corporate risk disclosure," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    6. Bingler, Julia Anna & Kraus, Mathias & Leippold, Markus & Webersinke, Nicolas, 2024. "How cheap talk in climate disclosures relates to climate initiatives, corporate emissions, and reputation risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    7. Erli Dan & Jianfei Shen & Yiwei Guo, 2023. "Corporate Sustainable Growth, Carbon Performance, and Voluntary Carbon Information Disclosure: New Panel Data Evidence for Chinese Listed Companies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-27, March.
    8. Schimanski, Tobias & Reding, Andrin & Reding, Nico & Bingler, Julia & Kraus, Mathias & Leippold, Markus, 2024. "Bridging the gap in ESG measurement: Using NLP to quantify environmental, social, and governance communication," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    9. Simona Malovana & Dominika Ehrenbergerova & Zuzana Gric, 2023. "What Do Economists Think About the Green Transition? Exploring the Impact of Environmental Awareness," Working Papers 2023/6, Czech National Bank.
    10. Zacharias Sautner & Laurence Van Lent & Grigory Vilkov & Ruishen Zhang, 2023. "Firm‐Level Climate Change Exposure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1449-1498, June.
    11. Wei Cai & Yue Chen & Shiva Rajgopal & Li Azinovic-Yang, 2024. "Diversity targets," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 2157-2208, September.
    12. Bogmans, Christian & Pescatori, Andrea & Prifti, Ervin, 2024. "The impact of climate policy on oil and gas investment: Evidence from firm-level data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    13. Hastreiter, Nikolaus, 2024. "Can investor coalitions drive corporate climate action?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 125852, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Acosta-Smith, Jonathan & Guin, Benjamin & Salgado-Moreno, Mauricio & Vo, Quynh-Anh, 2023. "Understanding climate-related disclosures of UK financial institutions," Bank of England working papers 1017, Bank of England.
    15. Tom Deweerdt & Kristin Caltabiano & Paul Dargusch, 2022. "Original Research: How Will the TNFD Impact the Health Sector’s Nature-Risks Management?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-10, October.
    16. Duncombe, Samuel & Park, Min & Tarsalewska, Monika & Trojanowski, Grzegorz, 2023. "ESG positioning in private infrastructure fundraising," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    17. Rob Bauer & Dirk Broeders & Annick van Ool, 2023. "Walk the green talk? A textual analysis of pension funds’ disclosures of sustainable investing," Working Papers 770, DNB.
    18. Tobias Schimanski & Chiara Colesanti Senni & Glen Gostlow & Jingwei Ni & Tingyu Yu & Markus Leippold, 2023. "Exploring Nature: Datasets and Models for Analyzing Nature-Related Disclosures," Papers 2312.17337, arXiv.org.
    19. Perera, Kasun & Kuruppuarachchi, Duminda & Kumarasinghe, Sriyalatha & Suleman, Muhammad Tahir, 2023. "The impact of carbon disclosure and carbon emissions intensity on firms' idiosyncratic volatility," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    20. Feng, Weilin & Meng, Yuqun & Tian, Li Grace & Tu, Steve & Wang, Yuran, 2023. "Corporate strategy and litigation risk," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PB).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate-risk disclosure; Voluntary reporting; TCFD recommendations; Natural language processing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • C8 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs
    • M48 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Government Policy and Regulation

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