Climate news and accounting comparability

IF 1.5 Q3 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Advances in Accounting Pub Date : 2025-08-04 DOI:10.1016/j.adiac.2025.100841

Justin Chircop , Nhat Q. Nguyen , Tri T. Nguyen

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

We examine the effect of climate news on accounting comparability. We argue that climate news informs market participants about firms' climate exposure, inducing a reassessment of the firms' future cash flows. This reassessment increases the variance in accounting estimates, hence reducing accounting comparability among industry peers. Consistently, we find a negative relationship between market-level measures of climate news and one-year-ahead firm-level accounting comparability. This finding is robust to several sensitivity checks. This relationship is mediated by the intensity with which firms apply accounting standards to transform economic events into accounting numbers and moderated by the extent to which firms are exposed to climate risks and by firms' environmental performance. Our study contributes to the growing literature examining the negative effect of climate change on firm values and to the literature examining the determinants of accounting comparability. The practical implication of our study is that market participants should be cautious when comparing peer firms after periods of increased climate news.

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气候新闻和会计可比性

我们检验了气候新闻对会计可比性的影响。我们认为，气候新闻使市场参与者了解企业的气候风险，促使他们重新评估企业的未来现金流。这种重新评估增加了会计估计的差异，从而降低了行业同行之间的会计可比性。一致地，我们发现市场层面的气候新闻度量与一年前公司层面的会计可比性之间存在负相关关系。这一发现对几个敏感性检查是可靠的。这种关系受企业运用会计准则将经济事件转化为会计数字的强度的调节，并受企业暴露于气候风险的程度和企业的环境绩效的调节。我们的研究有助于越来越多的研究气候变化对企业价值的负面影响的文献，以及研究会计可比性决定因素的文献。我们研究的实际含义是，市场参与者在气候新闻增加后比较同行公司时应该谨慎。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Advances in Accounting BUSINESS, FINANCE-

CiteScore

2.50

自引率

6.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Advances in Accounting, incorporating Advances in International Accounting continues to provide an important international forum for discourse among and between academic and practicing accountants on the issues of significance. Emphasis continues to be placed on original commentary, critical analysis and creative research.