Consider managers evaluating their employees' performances. Should managers justify their subjective evaluations? Suppose a manager's evaluation is private information. Justifying her evaluation is costly but limits the principal's scope for distorting her evaluation of the employee. I show that...

Firms constantly face new and more stringent tax disclosure requirements and, increasingly, paying a fair share of tax is seen as part of corporate social responsibility. In this paper, we investigate whether mandating qualitative tax disclosure leads to intended outcomes, using, as an exogenous...

We examine whether a disclosure mandate for greenhouse gas emissions creates stakeholder pressure for firms to subsequently reduce their emissions. For UK-incorporated listed firms such a mandate was adopted in 2013. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that firms affected by the...

We investigate the relationship between the transparency of loan loss provision disclosures and the provisioning practices of privately held banks. We study a unique change in disclosure regulation under German banking law which introduces mandatory disclosures of loan loss provisions. Using...

The recent enactment of Directive 2021/2101 by the EU introduces a public Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR) regime, with the aim of promoting a level playing field for businesses operating within the EU Single Market. The directive seeks to bolster tax transparency requirements for...

We examine the capital market reaction to the announcement of the European Union (EU) to introduce a public tax country-by-country reporting (CbCR) regime. By employing an event study methodology, we find a significant cumulative average abnormal return (CAAR) of -0.699%, which translates into a...

When firms are forced to publicly disclose financial information, credit rating agencies are supposed to improve their risk assessments. Theory predicts such an information quality effect but also an adverse reputational concerns effect because credit analysts may become increasingly concerned...

In response to discussions about large multinational enterprises’ tax planning activities, legislators around the world have adopted numerous regulations to increase corporate tax transparency. New settings and datasets have spurred empirical research in recent years. Our paper presents a...

Firms are facing progressively more stringent tax disclosure requirements. In this paper, we examine whether increased qualitative tax transparency leads to intended outcomes using, as an exogenous shock, the 2016 UK reform that mandated the disclosure of a tax strategy for firms above a certain...

This paper examines the reliance on ESG metrics in executive compensation contracts. In our sample of international publicly traded firms, a rapidly growing fraction incorporate ESG metrics in the compensation schemes of their top executives. Our analysis links the reliance on these metrics to...