We examine a potential benefit associated with the initiation of voluntary disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities: a reduction in firms' cost of equity capital. We find that firms with a high cost of equity capital in the previous year tend to initiate disclosure of CSR...

Prior studies show that corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting is informative to investors but lacks credibility. This study examines whether a commitment to audits of financial outcomes, proxied by audit fees, is associated with greater CSR reporting credibility. We find that audit...

We investigate the relation between societal trust and managers' decisions to voluntarily issue earnings forecasts. We reason that managers are more (less) likely to issue earnings forecasts in high-trust (low-trust) countries because these voluntary disclosures are viewed by investors as a...

We examine the economic effects of barriers to entry and rigidity of wages signaled by the foreign currency translation adjustment on multinational firms' stock returns. Specifically, based on economic theories an appreciation (depreciation) of the foreign currency exchange rate could signal (a)...