Firm Value Effects of Targeted Disclosure Regulation: The Role of Reputational Costs

We study the reputational costs of targeted disclosure regulation – disclosure requirements aimed at policy objectives outside of securities regulators’ traditional missions. This emerging type of disclosure regulation empowers civil society to deter firms’ illicit actions. Our setting is the SEC’s extraction payments disclosure rule, which requires oil and gas firms to publish details about their payments to host governments. Consistent with reputational costs imposed on affected firms, our event-study results document that the rule’s negative effect on firm value is stronger where greater reputational risk makes firms more vulnerable to public pressure. Our qualitative field evidence suggests that reputational costs arise because the required disclosures facilitate pressure groups’ campaigning. These findings are robust to several alternative explanations and research design choices.