Mounting nuclear plant decommissioning costs and utility deregulation focused attention on accounting for decommissioning liabilities. FASB's Exposure Draft 158-B proposes balance sheet recognition of the projected future decommissioning cost liability at initial plant commission. We expect market valuation of each dollar of decommissioning cost apportioned to utilities to vary with utility-specific factors related to the probability of cost recovery via rates. We find a more negative decommissioning cost/firm value association for utilities with higher business or financial risk. Also, equity value is significantly associated with total decommissioning cost across all nuclear units in which a utility has ownership interest.

Recent studies investigate the impact of air pollution on labor productivity. We extend this literature by showing that air pollution negatively affects equity analyst information production. Analysts exposed to air pollution are less likely to issue timely forecasts or improve their forecast accuracy. Investigating the underlying mechanism, we find that analysts exposed to air pollution are less likely to provide bold (especially, negatively bold) forecasts. We also find evidence that market pricing is less sensitive to forecast revisions issued by analysts exposed to air pollution. Our results are robust to controlling for firm/analyst and time fixed effects, as well as additional specifications employing difference-in-differences designs and placebo tests.