Time horizons of environmental versus non‐environmental costs: evidence from US tort lawsuits
研究发现环境成本的平均时间跨度超过十年，而非环境成本约为五年，这种差异可能导致管理者在评估投资时接受过多环境责任。
Abstract One explanation for a positive correlation between environmental and financial performance at the firm level is a bias in firms' investment evaluation processes caused by systematic differences between environmental and other investment opportunities. One of these systematic differences, often hypothesized but still unverified, is that environmental costs occur farther in the future than other costs. We empirically test this hypothesis, and find statistically significant support for it. In our data set the mean time lag for environmental costs was more than ten years, compared with five years for the control set costs. Such a difference could induce managers to accept too much environmental liability if they evaluate investments using discounted cash flow methods with a discount rate based on the firm‐wide cost of capital. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.