Shareholder’s Demand: A Determinant for the Environmental Disclosures: A Study in the Bangladesh Context

This is an exploratory research conducted to investigate whether shareholders demand plays the role of an important determinant for Environmental Disclosures (ED) in the context of environmental reporting of Bangladeshi companies. This study relies mostly on the primary data collected through a questionnaire with five point Likert scale. Throughout this study it is evident that investors of Bangladesh are aware of the environmental cost caused by the organizations but the investment decision is not affected by their concern for environment. The paper therefore also finds that shareholders tend not to place their demand for ED to the management but their perceived notion is that if they place their demand to the management, this more likely will motivate management to respond positively and provide with more detailed ED. Keywords: Environmental Disclosures (ED), Environmental Cost (EC), Awareness, Shareholder

Carbon emissions and default risk : International evidence from firm-level data

In this study, we investigate the effect of carbon emissions on firms' default risk. While existing literature exhibits the implications of emissions for firm performance and value, little is known about its impact on the default risk and underlying economic channels of the impact. Using a panel dataset of 2785 unique firms over the period 2004–2018 from 42 economies, we document a significant and negative impact of emissions on firms' distance-to-default, a reverse measure of default risk. We also provide evidence that firms’ environmental commitments and green initiatives mitigate the effect of emissions on default risk while environmental controversies exacerbate the effect. Finally, we identify the ROA and cash flow volatility as potential channels through which emissions affect the default risk. Overall results suggest that credit risk implications of firm-level emissions are worth considering in policy decisions by relevant stakeholders.</p

Environmental Performance and Corporate Governance: Evidence from Japan

This study investigates the impact of corporate governance on corporate environmental performance among Japanese companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for the period 2006–2019. Using fixed-effects modelling for 4617 firm-year observations from 2006–2019, we demonstrate that board independence, board diversity, and the presence of environmental management committees are significantly associated with improved environmental performance. However, a large board reduces the environmental performance, and CEO duality does not appear to be a significant factor affecting a firm’s environmental performance. Additionally, we show a consistent result when we proxy environmental performance by total carbon emissions