Voluntary climate action and credible regulatory threat: evidence from the carbon disclosure project

Lily Hsueh ()
Additional contact information
Lily Hsueh: Arizona State University

Journal of Regulatory Economics, 2019, vol. 56, issue 2, No 5, 188-225

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the role that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s introduction of the Clean Power Plan played in voluntary carbon disclosure by the Global 500 firms during 2011–2015. Results from difference-in-difference-in-differences estimators nested in a two-stage endogenous binary-variable model—which accounts for the correlation between a firm’s participation and intensity of participation—show that U.S.-based firms acted preemptively in anticipation of a more stringent regulatory environment. Regardless of country of origin, among firms making voluntary disclosures, the Clean Power Plan was associated with higher levels of carbon disclosure in firms with favorable management structures and practices involving the agency of corporate management, ceteris paribus. Empirical analysis includes controls for firm size, natural gas prices, sector-specific market pressures, and macro-economic and political economy dynamics. Results are robust to alternative specifications, including a trimmed matching sample, the Heckman selection model, and sector-specific regressions.

Keywords: Industry self-regulation; Carbon disclosure; Difference-in-difference-in-differences; Clean Power Plan; Corporate social responsiblity; Private provision of public goods; Endogenous binary variable model; Climate mitigation; Q54; Q58; M1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11149-019-09390-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:regeco:v:56:y:2019:i:2:d:10.1007_s11149-019-09390-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... on/journal/11149/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11149-019-09390-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Regulatory Economics is currently edited by Menaham Spiegel

More articles in Journal of Regulatory Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().