Business sustainability has emerged as the theme of the 21st century. We examine whether and how different components of economic sustainability disclosure (ECON), as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) dimensions of sustainability performance affect cost of equity, individually...

This paper examines how the qualitative characteristics of annual reports vary across different phases of the corporate life cycle. We measure the complexity, tone, and sentiment of 10-Ks, and classify firms into their distinct life cycle phases. Considering a sample of 24,268 firm-year...