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Cheap talk and cherry-picking: What ClimateBert has to say on corporate climate risk disclosures

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  • Bingler, Julia Anna
  • Kraus, Mathias
  • Leippold, Markus
  • Webersinke, Nicolas

Abstract

Disclosure of climate-related financial risks greatly helps investors assess companies’ preparedness for climate change. Voluntary disclosures such as those based on the recommendations of the Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) are being hailed as an effective measure for better climate risk management. We ask whether this expectation is justified. We do so by training ClimateBERT, a deep neural language model fine-tuned based on the language model BERT. In analyzing the disclosures of TCFD-supporting firms, ClimateBERT comes to the sobering conclusion that the firms’ TCFD support is mostly cheap talk and that firms cherry-pick to report primarily non-material climate risk information.

Suggested Citation

  • Bingler, Julia Anna & Kraus, Mathias & Leippold, Markus & Webersinke, Nicolas, 2022. "Cheap talk and cherry-picking: What ClimateBert has to say on corporate climate risk disclosures," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:47:y:2022:i:pb:s1544612322000897
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2022.102776
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    Cited by:

    1. Tom Deweerdt & Kristin Caltabiano & Paul Dargusch, 2022. "Original Research: How Will the TNFD Impact the Health Sector’s Nature-Risks Management?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-10, October.
    2. Duncombe, Samuel & Park, Min & Tarsalewska, Monika & Trojanowski, Grzegorz, 2023. "ESG positioning in private infrastructure fundraising," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    3. Matteo Gasparini & Peter Tufano, 2023. "The Evolving Academic Field of Climate Finance," Harvard Business School Working Papers 23-057, Harvard Business School.
    4. Alexandra Sadler & Nicola Ranger & Sam Fankhauser & Fulvia Marotta & Brian O’Callaghan, 2024. "The impact of COVID-19 fiscal spending on climate change adaptation and resilience," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 7(3), pages 270-281, March.
    5. Wang, Yaozhong & He, Pinzhen, 2024. "Enterprise digital transformation, financial information disclosure and innovation efficiency," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    6. Rob Bauer & Dirk Broeders & Annick van Ool, 2023. "Walk the green talk? A textual analysis of pension funds’ disclosures of sustainable investing," Working Papers 770, DNB.
    7. Jeanne, Amar & Demaria, Samira & Rigot, Sandra, 2023. "What are the drivers of corporates' climate transparency? Evidence from the S&P 1200 index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    8. Tobias Schimanski & Chiara Colesanti Senni & Glen Gostlow & Jingwei Ni & Tingyu Yu & Markus Leippold, 2023. "Exploring Nature: Datasets and Models for Analyzing Nature-Related Disclosures," Papers 2312.17337, arXiv.org.
    9. Perera, Kasun & Kuruppuarachchi, Duminda & Kumarasinghe, Sriyalatha & Suleman, Muhammad Tahir, 2023. "The impact of carbon disclosure and carbon emissions intensity on firms' idiosyncratic volatility," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    10. Sun, Shuangcheng & Xiao, Xiaoyan, 2024. "Delegation of management authority and the level of corporate risk disclosure," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    11. Bingler, Julia Anna & Kraus, Mathias & Leippold, Markus & Webersinke, Nicolas, 2024. "How cheap talk in climate disclosures relates to climate initiatives, corporate emissions, and reputation risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    12. Erli Dan & Jianfei Shen & Yiwei Guo, 2023. "Corporate Sustainable Growth, Carbon Performance, and Voluntary Carbon Information Disclosure: New Panel Data Evidence for Chinese Listed Companies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(5), pages 1-27, March.
    13. Schimanski, Tobias & Reding, Andrin & Reding, Nico & Bingler, Julia & Kraus, Mathias & Leippold, Markus, 2024. "Bridging the gap in ESG measurement: Using NLP to quantify environmental, social, and governance communication," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    14. Simona Malovana & Dominika Ehrenbergerova & Zuzana Gric, 2023. "What Do Economists Think About the Green Transition? Exploring the Impact of Environmental Awareness," Working Papers 2023/6, Czech National Bank.
    15. Zacharias Sautner & Laurence Van Lent & Grigory Vilkov & Ruishen Zhang, 2023. "Firm‐Level Climate Change Exposure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1449-1498, June.
    16. Wei Cai & Yue Chen & Shiva Rajgopal & Li Azinovic-Yang, 2024. "Diversity targets," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 2157-2208, September.
    17. Bogmans, Christian & Pescatori, Andrea & Prifti, Ervin, 2024. "The impact of climate policy on oil and gas investment: Evidence from firm-level data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    18. Acosta-Smith, Jonathan & Guin, Benjamin & Salgado-Moreno, Mauricio & Vo, Quynh-Anh, 2023. "Understanding climate-related disclosures of UK financial institutions," Bank of England working papers 1017, Bank of England.
    19. Feng, Weilin & Meng, Yuqun & Tian, Li Grace & Tu, Steve & Wang, Yuran, 2023. "Corporate strategy and litigation risk," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PB).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Climate-risk disclosure; Voluntary reporting; TCFD recommendations; Natural language processing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G2 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • C8 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs
    • M48 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Accounting - - - Government Policy and Regulation

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