Mandatory versus voluntary: The real effect of ESG disclosures on corporate earnings management
研究发现强制ESG披露能减少企业盈余管理，而自愿披露几乎无影响；强制披露通过提高会计信息透明度来缓解信息不对称，且对盈余操纵动机强的企业效果更明显。
This paper aims to explore the real effect of mandatory and voluntary environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure on corporate earnings management. We find that mandatory ESG disclosure has a negative effect on firms’ earnings management, while voluntary disclosure has almost no significant impact. We exploit China’s 2008 mandate regulation and construct a difference-in-differences design to show that firms with mandatory ESG disclosure experience an alleviation of information asymmetry through increased transparency of specific accounting items and eventually decrease earnings management. In addition, the negative effect of mandatory ESG disclosure is more pronounced for firms with stronger motivations to manipulate earnings. We also find that the ESG disclosure quality is higher under mandatory disclosure and the environmental, social, and government performance is improved for firms disclosed ESG reports. Our results support the view that mandatory ESG disclosure has informative advantages over voluntary disclosure and improves the quality of financial reporting.