The impact of political and media disclosures in the context of ESG

This thesis consists of three papers spanning the themes of environmental, social, and governance issues (ESG), politics, and information disclosure. The first chapter, which is solo-authored, studies how charity disclosure choices are impacted by political uncertainty and political attention. Specifically, I examine whether charities shift their public-facing website disclosures in response to their primary focus issues being highlighted in politicians’ election campaign advertisements. I show that charities involved in social causes (homelessness, immigration, reproductive rights) increase their website disclosures during elections, and that they increase their politically relevant disclosures under conditions of heightened political uncertainty. This effect is mitigated when the relevant causes are highlighted in political advertisements, consistent with charities’ need to draw public attention to their causes being tempered when politicians themselves do so. The second chapter, which is co-authored with Maria Correia and Aneesh Raghunandan, studies the impact of heightened political scrutiny on firms’ environmental performance and their propensity to engage in misconduct. We examine whether firms’ emission levels and environmental violation rates shift in response to political campaigns’ highlighting of environmental issues, measured by the broadcast of environment-focused political advertisements. We show that environmental performance improves subsequent to environment-focused political advertisements being broadcast, particularly in state-years having historically poor environmental track records where the threat of enforcement is likely to be most credible. The third chapter, which is solo-authored, examines analyst earnings forecast revisions in response to instances of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) being highlighted in the media. I show that analysts revise their earnings forecasts downwards in response to CSI incidents implicating the forecasted firm or its industry peers, consistent with analysts updating corporate ESG risk profiles in response to new information. Thus, the thesis examines how corporate, charitable, and individual actors respond to environmentally and socially relevant disclosures made by politicians and media organizations.