This study examines the impact of voluntary environmental disclosure on the cost of equity capital and firm value, and on the public perception about a firm's environmental performance. A salient feature of the study is that our analysis controls for corporate environmental performance using...

We utilize the staggered adoption of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD) by U.S. state courts as an exogenous shock to the proprietary costs of disclosure and study the impact of the IDD on corporate financial reporting policy. We find compelling evidence that firms headquartered in states...