An Analysis of Firms' Self-Reported Anticorruption Efforts

An Analysis of Firms' Self-Reported Anticorruption Efforts. George Serafeim, March 2016, Paper, "We use Transparency International's ratings of self-reported anticorruption efforts to analyze factors underlying the ratings. Our tests examine whether these disclosures reflect firms' real efforts to combat corruption or are cheap talk. We find that the ratings are related to enforcement and monitoring, country and industry corruption risk, and governance variables. Controlling for these effects and other ratings determinants, we find that firms with lower residual ratings have higher subsequent citations in corruption news events."