No. 165: Targeting Transparency: Early Evidence on Mandatory Adoption of European Sustainability Reporting Standards

Jahr: 2024

Typ: Working Paper

Abstract

European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) constitute the most comprehensive introduction of mandatory ESG reporting globally to date. We propose to study its first-order effects on firms‘ sustainability-related transparency, measured based on granular data points, rich narrative context, as well as firms‘ exercise of adoption choices and discretion. For about 1,000 EU firms implementing ESRS for the first time in 2024, we will provide detailed descriptive evidence on ESRS-induced transparency changes as well as difference-indifferences analyses benchmarking these changes against global and U.S. peers. By integrating multiple sources of field evidence, pre-committing to a research design, and offering several open-science resources, we aim to provide relevant and timely evidence that facilitates future sustainability reporting research.

Veröffentlichungsinformationen

TRR 266 researchers

Charlotte Donau University of Cologne

Katharina Hombach Goethe University Frankfurt

Katharina Hombach is Assistant Professor of Accounting at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Her research focuses on mandatory disclosure, in particular the economic consequences of disclosure regulation. Her work has been presented at national and international conferences.

Inga Elise Meringdal Goethe University Frankfurt

Maximilian Müller University of Cologne

Max Müller joined the University of Cologne as Professor of Accounting in June 2022. Prior to that, he was Associate Professor of Accounting at ESMT Berlin and on the faculty of WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Max Müller has published several research papers in leading finance and accounting journals with a focus on disclosure (regulation) and taxation in capital markets. He serves on the editorial board of the European Accounting Review and enjoys contributing his expertise to practice, e.g., by advising a quantitative asset management firm.

Thorsten Sellhorn LMU Munich

Thorsten Sellhorn is Director of the Institute for Accounting, Auditing and Analysis at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) of Munich. His research interests include International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the role of accounting information in capital markets as well as accounting quality and earnings management. His research is published in leading international journals like Management Science, The Accounting Review, European Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies and Abacus. He is a co-author of a leading German textbook on international accounting, Internationale Rechnungslegung, and is president (2019-2021) of the European Accounting Association (EAA).

Victor Wagner LMU Munich

DOI

DOI Link

Cite this article as

Donau, C. L., Hombach, K., Meringdal, I. E., Müller, M. A., Sellhorn, T., & Wagner, V. (2024). Targeting Transparency: Early Evidence on Mandatory Adoption of European Sustainability Reporting Standards. TRR 266 Accounting for Transparency Working Paper Series No. 165. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5010700

Zugehörige Projekte

A07

Ambiguity, Learning, and the Diffusion of Reporting Practices

+ 14

B04

Real Effects of Transparency

+ 12