The study explores the incremental explanatory power of replacement cost earnings variables (derived from ASR 190 data) with respect to explaining cross sectional differences in security returns. As such, the study is a natural extension of previous research, including analyses of the effect of security returns of ASR 190 data at the time of disclosure, investigations of cross sectional relationships between security returns and historical cost earnings, and studies of multiple signals. The basic finding is that pre-holding gain net income provides no incremental explanatory powerm given knowledge of historical cost earnings. However, the converse does not hold. Taken together, the findings are consistent with the contention that pre-holding gain net income is a garbled version of historical cost earnings. The basic finding is robust under several extensions of the initial research design. The research design incorporates a two-stage approach which permits a determination of the incremental explanatory power of collinear variables. The findings are in contrast to those of a previous study by Easman et al. (1979). The nature of the difference in research design inducing the difference is identified. Potential reasons for the difference in findings are provided.

This study tests whether the information processing costs of analysts vary positively with the environmental performance information available on the firms they follow. Consistent with this conjecture, we find that these costs increase when analysts process a wider array of environmental performance ratings. Specifically we find that as the number of environmental performance ratings increases, analysts cover fewer firms in their portfolio, provide fewer earnings-per-share (EPS) forecast revisions, and make less timely forecast revisions. Two additional tests confirm that our results relate to environmental performance information and not to confounding factors. First, the “shock” of the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 implemented for California firms in 2012 increases analyst information processing costs incremental to the main effect of environmental performance ratings. Second, analyst information processing costs increase further in the year a firm covered by an analyst provides a CSR report for the first time. Our results have implications for firm managers considering voluntary environmental disclosure and investors deciding on what stocks to include in their socially responsible portfolios because when processing costs are high, analysts will provide less information or less timely information, resulting in more gradual price discovery in capital markets.

This study finds that investors price firms' greenhouse gas ( GHG ) emissions as a negative component of equity value, and this valuation discount does not differ between firms that voluntarily disclose to the Carbon Disclosure Project ( CDP ) and nondisclosing firms. We derive the GHG emissions for nondisclosers from an estimation model that incorporates firm characteristics and industry. The finding that investors view CDP amounts and estimates of emissions as equally value‐relevant suggests that equity values reflect GHG information from channels other than the CDP . An event study of investors' response to emission‐related information in firms' 8‐K filings further supports this finding. Economically, our results suggest that, for the median S&P 500 firm, GHG emissions impose a market‐implied equity discount of $79 per ton, representing about one‐half of 1 percent of market capitalization.

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) has classified sustainability topics as material or not material for investors. We leverage the staggered release of the SASB classifications from 2013 to 2016 to examine whether and how they prompt changes in U.S. firms' sustainability performance. We measure sustainability performance using RepRisk scores, which reflect environmental, social, and governance (ESG) incidents. We find that RepRisk scores on sustainability topics classified as material decrease following the release of SASB classifications. Conversely, incident scores on nonmaterial sustainability topics increase. This suggests that firms improve their sustainability performance on topics the SASB deems relevant for investors while simultaneously performing worse on irrelevant topics. Firms adjust their internal sustainability policies to mirror these changes. The changes in sustainability performance occur primarily through two channels. We document that higher exposure to the classifications from shareholder pressure and sustainability-linked executive compensation prompts managers to prioritize sustainability topics classified as relevant for investors over irrelevant ones.

We examine whether proprietary costs drive R&D-active firms' choice of private loan structure. We find that R&D-active firms are more likely to choose single-lender over multi-lender private loan financing. This is consistent with the theory that high-ability entrepreneurs protect their proprietary knowledge by communicating it to a single lender while disclosing generic and less sensitive information to the public. This propensity, however, significantly decreases after the enactment of the American Inventor's Protection Act (AIPA), which accelerated public disclosure of firms' patent details in filings with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This accelerated public disclosure potentially caused R&D information to spill over to rivals, increasing the proprietary costs of single-lender borrowers. AIPA enactment also increased the spread on R&D-active firms' single-lender loans. These findings contribute to the voluntary disclosure and financing choice literature by linking R&D-active firms' choice of single-lender financing to the proprietary costs of public disclosure. Data Availability: From public sources identified in the study.