Foreign Institutional Investors, Legal Origin, and Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosure

Journal of Business Ethics

55 Pages Posted: 7 Dec 2020 Last revised: 10 Mar 2023

See all articles by Simon Döring

Simon Döring

University of Hamburg

Wolfgang Drobetz

University of Hamburg

Sadok El Ghoul

University of Alberta - Campus Saint-Jean

Omrane Guedhami

University of South Carolina - Moore School of Business

Henning Schröder

Leuphana University Lüneburg; Hamburg Financial Research Center

Date Written: November 5, 2020

Abstract

The disclosure of corporate environmental performance is an increasingly important element of a firm’s ethical behavior. We analyze how the legal origin of foreign institutional investors affects a firm’s voluntary carbon disclosure. Using a large sample of firms from 36 countries, we show that foreign institutional ownership from civil law countries improves the scope and quality of a firm’s greenhouse gas emissions reporting. This relation is robust to addressing endogeneity and selection biases. The effect is more pronounced in firms from non-climate-sensitized countries, for which the gap between firms’ environmental standards and investors’ environmental targets is potentially larg-er, and in less international firms. Firms with a higher level of voluntary carbon disclosure also exhibit higher valuations.

Keywords: Institutional investors, foreign ownership, legal origin, corporate environmental responsi-bility, carbon disclosure, firm value

Suggested Citation

Döring, Simon and Drobetz, Wolfgang and El Ghoul, Sadok and Guedhami, Omrane and Schröder, Henning, Foreign Institutional Investors, Legal Origin, and Corporate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosure (November 5, 2020). Journal of Business Ethics, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3725355 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3725355

Simon Döring

University of Hamburg ( email )

Moorweidenstraße 18
Hamburg, 20148
Germany

Wolfgang Drobetz

University of Hamburg ( email )

Moorweidenstrasse 18
Hamburg, 20148
Germany

Sadok El Ghoul (Contact Author)

University of Alberta - Campus Saint-Jean ( email )

Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2R3
Canada
780-465-8725 (Phone)
780-465-8760 (Fax)

Omrane Guedhami

University of South Carolina - Moore School of Business ( email )

Columbia, SC
United States

Henning Schröder

Leuphana University Lüneburg ( email )

Lueneburg
Germany

Hamburg Financial Research Center

Hamburg
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.hfrc.org

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