The rise of shale gas and tight oil development has triggered a major debate about hydraulic fracturing (HF). In an effort to mitigate risks from HF, especially with respect to water quality, many U.S. states have introduced disclosure mandates for HF wells and fracturing fluids. We use this...

The impact of unconventional oil and gas development on water quality is a major environmental concern. We built a large, geo-coded database that combines surface water measurements with horizontally drilled wells stimulated by hydraulic fracturing (HF) for several shales to examine whether...

The rise of shale gas and tight oil development has triggered a major debate about hydraulic fracturing (HF). In an effort to bring light to HF practices and their potential risks to water quality, many U.S. states have mandated disclosure for HF wells and the fluids used. We employ this setting...

The rise of shale gas and tight oil development has triggered a major debate about hydraulic fracturing (HF). In an effort to mitigate risks from HF, especially with respect to water quality, many U.S. states have introduced disclosure mandates for HF wells and fracturing fluids. We use this...

We exploit the Fukushima nuclear disaster as a source of variation in the demand for environmental information to study the economic consequences of environmental disclosure. Using a large, hand-collected sample of Japanese firms, we find that firms that issue stand-alone environmental reports...

I examine whether a bankruptcy reform that increases the ability to renegotiate debt contracts when a firm is in distress affects firms' timely loss recognition. The legal changes that are embedded in the reform are expected to decrease renegotiation costs and the risk of coordination failure in...

This paper examines the effect of disclosure regulation on the takeover market. We study the implementation of a recent European regulation that imposes tighter disclosure requirements regarding the financial and ownership information on public firms. We find a substantial drop in the number of...

Global investors often demand independent assessments of firms’ governance mechanisms. However, the supply of such evaluations is subject to two important limitations: assessment error and lack of coverage in certain regions. This paper studies a recent initiative that addresses these...

This paper studies the economic consequences of certification of corporate governance practices. For identification, we exploit a recent cross-country initiative by a coalition of key institutions in Southeast Asia; the periodic publication of a “Top List” of companies in the region selected...