Three Essays on Environmental, Social, and Governance Transparency

Three Essays on Environmental, Social, and Governance Transparency
Author: Hendijani Zadeh Mohammad
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation is comprised of three essays on determinants and consequences of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Transparency. Transparency refers to high quantity of material and value relevant information about ESG issues. In the first essay, we explore the relationship between our two variables of interest (i.e., audit quality and public media exposure) and ESG transparency on a sample of publicly listed Canadian firms in in the S&P/TSX Index of the Toronto Stock Exchange. Results show that audit quality and public media exposure are two main drivers of ESG transparency, hence, commitment to high quality audits and exposure to high public media coverage drive firms to be more transparent about ESG issues. Finally, as a consequence of ESG transparency, we find a negative association between ESG transparency and firm-level investment inefficiency. The second essay examine whether the transparency of environmental and social (E&S) information affects financial analysts' forecast properties that reflect their information set. Focusing on a sample of non-financial and non-utility U.S. firms from the S&P 500 index, results suggest that the level of transparency vis-à-vis both E&S information is negatively related to analysts' forecast errors as well as forecast dispersion. These negative relationships become more pronounced for firms with low financial reporting quality, low media coverage, and for those with weak governance. Finally, we find that E&S transparency relates with investment efficiency essentially via analysts` information environment, which thus acts as a mediating variable. This finding is consistent with financial analysts also playing a monitoring role in capital markets. The third essay, we investigate how a firm's (E&S) transparency relates with its cash holdings. Focusing on a large sample of S&P 500 firms, results show that a higher level of E&S transparency implies lower firm-level cash holdings. The negative relationship is more pronounced for firms suffering from high information asymmetry, with low financial reporting quality, and for those with weak governance. Further analyses document that the two channels and mechanisms by which E&S transparency affect firm-level cash holdings are the cost of debt and financial constraints. Finally, our findings suggest that E&S transparency increases the market value relevance of an additional dollar in cash holdings.

Three Essays in Public Sector Transparency

Three Essays in Public Sector Transparency
Author: Olumide Adeoye
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022
Genre:
ISBN:

ABSTRACT The need for public sector transparency cannot be overemphasized. Citizens cannot hold public officials accountable if they do not know what the officials intend to do (transparency in decision-making), what they are doing (transparency in the process of doing), or how their actions will affect the public (outcome transparency). However, evidence from the available literature and some observable practical effects show that such expectations are usually overstated or accompanied by unforeseen negative repercussions. Public sector transparency is clouded by this ambiguity, resulting in a never-ending debate. However, even though there exists a vast body of literature on public sector transparency, there seems to be no overarching synopsis that synthesizes the ambiguities and complexities affecting transparency at all levels of government in the public sector. Thus, the question becomes, why does public sector transparency frequently manifest as a complex idea in both theoretical and practical terms in the public sector? To better understand public sector transparency, this dissertation examines seven questions through three different but related lenses: a systematic review of why certain factors associated with public sector transparency have both positive and detrimental effects; an empirical reexamination of one such factor (democracy) to better understand its directional relationship with public sector transparency; and a systematic review of why public sector inconsistencies are so prevalent and how to navigate them moving forward.

Lifting the Veil: Essays on Firm Transparency and Consumer Behavior

Lifting the Veil: Essays on Firm Transparency and Consumer Behavior
Author: Bhavya Mohan
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

This research examines the effects of firm transparency on consumer behavior. Three essays investigate how consumer behavior changes when firms are transparent about costs, wages, and promotional strategies. Essay one investigates when and why firms benefit from revealing confidential unit cost information to consumers. A natural field experiment conducted with an online retailer suggests that cost transparency can boost sales. Subsequent controlled lab experiments replicate this basic effect and provide evidence for why it occurs. Essay two examines whether consumer behavior is influenced by the disclosure of a firm's pay ratio - the ratio of the total compensation of the CEO to the average annual compensation of all other employees. Pilot field data and a series of experiments show that pay ratio disclosure affects the purchase intentions of a subset of consumers, via perceptions of wage fairness. Essay three examines how marketing offers that are framed as percentages can confuse consumers, due to highly non-linear impacts in terms of actual value. Three lab studies and one field experiment show that while even highly numerate consumers are prone to error, the transparent provision of rate information can help consumers evaluate offers more accurately.

Shrouded Information and Strategic Transparency: Three Essays on Price Obfuscation

Shrouded Information and Strategic Transparency: Three Essays on Price Obfuscation
Author: Elizabeth Bennett Chiles
Publisher:
Total Pages: 137
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

Many firms engage in activities aimed at making prices less transparent - tactics that may be referred to collectively as price obfuscation. Existing theory does not explain the substantial heterogeneity that exists both within and across industries with respect to the prevalence of these practices. The essays herein thus seek to shed further light on this phenomenon. In particular, I address several interrelated questions: what incentives drive firms to obfuscate in the first place, what are the potential consequences (if any) of doing so, and how do these tradeoffs vary depending on firm characteristics and market conditions? Novel empirical results are drawn from U.S. hotel industry data in Chapters 1 and 2; in Chapter 3, I synthesize existing price obfuscation literature from a range of disciplines and provide several illustrative case studies. Taken together, these three essays build toward a more comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding why, in practice, some firms utilize obfuscation (and deceptive tactics more broadly) while others do not.

Empirical Essays on Remote Work and Transparency in Performance Management

Empirical Essays on Remote Work and Transparency in Performance Management
Author: Felix Bölingen
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2024-07-29
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3947095120

This dissertation consists of four studies that address the impact of two human resource management practices - remote work and transparency in performance management - on outcomes that are vital to organizations and society at large. The first study, using a sample of 545 employees, examines the conditions under which remote work influences employees' work-home interface and satisfaction outcomes. The second study, using data from dual-earner couples in Germany, adopts a systems perspective, understanding employees and their romantic partners as an entangled unit that responds to increased remote work. Taken together, these studies contribute to a deeper understanding of why employees' experiences of remote work are heterogeneous. Employees may thrive in remote work arrangements; however, work coming into the wrong home can increase work-home conflict, decrease satisfaction, and increase loneliness. The last two studies contribute to a controversial debate in academia and practice about the extent to which performance management should be transparent. Study three presents a theoretical model of performance feedback transparency and tests the predictions in a laboratory experiment. Results show that increased transparency of performance feedback induces both status concerns and a learning focus, which predict employee task performance. Study four examines the emotion-driven performance consequences of miscalibrated pay expectations, a potential outcome of insufficient transparency in performance management. Three experimental studies caution against miscalibrated bonus payments. Taken together, the studies provide evidence that performance management can benefit from a more transparent approach, but that effective pay and performance communication is a delicate act.

Shifting Obsessions

Shifting Obsessions
Author: Ivan Krastev
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789639241947

Annotation Rather than being a study of anti-corruption policies, this work looks at the politics of anti-corruption and their institutional motivations. Krastev argues that anti-corruption sentiments are not driven by the actual level of corruption but by general disappointment with liberal reforms that cause rising social inequality. In this collection of essays, the author makes the provocative argument that the current corruption-focused policies are doomed.

Transparency in International Law

Transparency in International Law
Author: Andrea Bianchi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2013-11-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107470242

While its importance in domestic law has long been acknowledged, transparency has until now remained largely unexplored in international law. This study of transparency issues in key areas such as international economic law, environmental law, human rights law and humanitarian law brings together new and important insights on this pressing issue. Contributors explore the framing and content of transparency in their respective fields with regard to proceedings, institutions, law-making processes and legal culture, and a selection of cross-cutting essays completes the study by examining transparency in international law-making and adjudication.