Outsourcing the enforcement of modern slavery: Overcoming the limitations of a market-based disclosure model

Recent legislative efforts to address modern slavery emphasise corporate disclosure as the primary regulatory tool. New modern slavery disclosure laws harden the expectation that business will conduct itself responsibly; however, they are founded on a soft approach to enforcement which is essentially outsourced to the market. This paper questions the effectiveness of this disclosure-based enforcement mechanism, which primarily relies on a narrowly defined concept of ‘the market’ as the basis for its regulatory strategy. Drawing on comparisons with alternative legislative enforcement frameworks to counter foreign bribery and illegal logging, this paper highlights the opportunities and limitations of reliance on market forces for regulation and suggests a path forward for enhancing the modern slavery enforcement approach.

Three Essays on Corporate Financial Constraints

<p><b>This thesis is composed of three self-contained empirical essays in corporate finance, with the first two exploring the financial policy and credit risk implications of data breaches, and the third examining whether financing influences the sensitivity of cash and investment to asset tangibility. In the first essay, we contribute to the growing debate on cybersecurity risks and how firms can insulate themselves, at least partially, from the adverse effects of data breach risks. Specifically, we examine the effects of data breach disclosure laws and the subsequent disclosure of data breaches on the cash policies of corporations in the United States (U.S.). Exploiting a series of natural experiments regarding staggered state-level data breach disclosure laws, we find that the passage of mandatory disclosure laws leads to an increase in cash holdings. Our finding suggests that mandatory data breach disclosure laws increase the ex ante risks related to data breaches, hence, firms hold on to more cash as a precautionary motive. Further, we find firms that suffer data breaches adjust their financial policies by holding more cash as well as decreasing external finance and investment.</b></p> <p>The second essay examines the impact of data breaches on firm credit risk. Using firm-level credit ratings and credit default swap (CDS) spreads to proxy for credit risk, we find that data breaches lead to increases in firm credit risk. Firms exposed to data breaches are more likely to experience credit rating downgrades and an increase in the CDS spread of traded bonds. Also, firms who suffer data breaches report lower sales and ROA, experience an increase in financial distress, and conditional on a data breach incident, the likelihood of a future data breach increases. Lastly, these effects are magnified for firms with low-interest coverage ratios.</p> <p>In the third essay, using the financial deregulation of seasoned equity issuance in the U.S. as an exogenous shock to access to equity markets, I investigate the influence of financing on the sensitivity of cash and investment to asset tangibility. I show that financing dampens the sensitivity of cash and investment to asset tangibility and promotes investment and firm growth. This provides evidence that public firms even in well-developed financial markets such as the U.S., benefit from financial deregulation that removes barriers to external equity financing, shedding light on the role of financial markets in fostering growth.</p>

Three Essays on Corporate Financial Constraints

<p><b>This thesis is composed of three self-contained empirical essays in corporate finance, with the first two exploring the financial policy and credit risk implications of data breaches, and the third examining whether financing influences the sensitivity of cash and investment to asset tangibility. In the first essay, we contribute to the growing debate on cybersecurity risks and how firms can insulate themselves, at least partially, from the adverse effects of data breach risks. Specifically, we examine the effects of data breach disclosure laws and the subsequent disclosure of data breaches on the cash policies of corporations in the United States (U.S.). Exploiting a series of natural experiments regarding staggered state-level data breach disclosure laws, we find that the passage of mandatory disclosure laws leads to an increase in cash holdings. Our finding suggests that mandatory data breach disclosure laws increase the ex ante risks related to data breaches, hence, firms hold on to more cash as a precautionary motive. Further, we find firms that suffer data breaches adjust their financial policies by holding more cash as well as decreasing external finance and investment.</b></p> <p>The second essay examines the impact of data breaches on firm credit risk. Using firm-level credit ratings and credit default swap (CDS) spreads to proxy for credit risk, we find that data breaches lead to increases in firm credit risk. Firms exposed to data breaches are more likely to experience credit rating downgrades and an increase in the CDS spread of traded bonds. Also, firms who suffer data breaches report lower sales and ROA, experience an increase in financial distress, and conditional on a data breach incident, the likelihood of a future data breach increases. Lastly, these effects are magnified for firms with low-interest coverage ratios.</p> <p>In the third essay, using the financial deregulation of seasoned equity issuance in the U.S. as an exogenous shock to access to equity markets, I investigate the influence of financing on the sensitivity of cash and investment to asset tangibility. I show that financing dampens the sensitivity of cash and investment to asset tangibility and promotes investment and firm growth. This provides evidence that public firms even in well-developed financial markets such as the U.S., benefit from financial deregulation that removes barriers to external equity financing, shedding light on the role of financial markets in fostering growth.</p>

The Impact of Firm Performance on Annual Report Readability

This paper attempts to find the impact of firm performance on annual report readability. This study consists of 15 listed firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange within the period 2008 to 2017. The study applies Gunning Fog Index to measure annual report readability and measures Firm Performance using Return on Assets (ROA) by applying the fixed and random effect method. Per the Hausman test, the random effect method was accepted; the result stated that firm performance positively relates to annual report readability. In addition, the study finds out that corporate governance exerted a negative influence on the readability of the annual report. Finally, the study adopts F-MOLS to test Robustness. Regulators can consider improving and writing plain disclosure laws to improve annual report readability.

Revealing Truth through Diagnostics: From Disclosure Laws to Clinical Research for Novel Drug Development

This article examines the changing role of ‘confessional technologies’ (Foucault 1990) over the history of the HIV pandemic, beginning when US public health departments first rolled out testing campaigns and continuing in the present day through the expansion of diagnostic practices to support the development and implementation of pharmaceutical technologies for HIV prevention. Across this decades-long history, diagnostic practices have been shaped by ethical principles, legal mandates, and research priorities, which have compelled the individual who is ‘at risk’ of acquiring HIV to speak about their sexual practices and thus reveal hidden truths about one’s self to an intimate Other (Whitacre 2018). Indeed, public health ethics have long focused on confession as a means for disciplining safe sex and managing pleasure (Race 2007) and relied on these techniques to secure resources for survival (Nguyen 2010). I argue that confessions have recently become a productive means by which to generate evidence about the efficacy of pharmaceuticals. Practices of revealing truth have contributed to clinical evidence for pharmaceutical interventions, including the use of antiretrovirals for oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Considering the contemporary use of confessions in enabling the development of drug products and facilitating market growth, I contend that confessing should be understood as a form of labour.

Campaign Contributions and Partisan Vote Choice

Chapter 6 investigates the effects of campaign finance information on partisan (candidate) vote choice, a separate interest advanced by the Buckley Court in the context of campaign finance disclosure laws. More specifically, survey-based experiments are used to ascertain the impact of information about the amount of money raised by a candidate for office, as well as the source of that money, on a respondent’s likelihood of casting a ballot for that candidate. The data indicate that the amount raised by a candidate matters much less than where that money comes from. In addition, the empirical analysis shows that partisans were often more influenced by information about their own candidate than about the candidate of the opposing party.

Following the Money? How Donor Information Affects Public Opinion about Initiatives

Citizens are typically uninformed about politics and know little about issues at stake in direct democracy elections. Government efforts to inform electorates include requiring donors to initiative campaigns to report their activities and then circulating such donor information to citizens. What effects does donor information have on citizens’ opinions? We conduct a survey experiment where respondents express opinions about initiatives in a real-world election. We manipulate whether they receive donor information, party cues, policy information from a nonpartisan expert, or no additional information. We find that donor information influences citizens’ opinions in the aggregate, with effects comparable to those of party cues and policy information. However, donor information has negligible effects on uninformed citizens, who have difficulty inferring donors’ policy interests and connecting them to their own. These results underscore the potential benefits of efforts to inform electorates via disclosure laws and highlight disparities in their effectiveness for informed and uninformed citizens.

IMPLEMENTASI KEBIJAKAN KETERBUKAAN INFORMASI PUBLIK PADA BADAN PUBLIK SEKTOR SUMBER DAYA ALAM DI PROVINSI KALIMANTAN TIMUR

This article will discuss the comparison and analysis of public information disclosure laws at the Plantation, Environment, Forestry, Energy and Mineral Resources Office in East Kalimantan Province. The methodology used is in the type of comparative research, where data is collected and analyzed that is narrative in nature, as well as in-depth information about the issues or problems to be solved. The research findings indicate that the public information disclosure policy has been implemented, but not optimal.Keywords: Implementation, Openness, Information, Public

The Accountability of Multinational Companies for Human Rights Violations, Regulatory Trends and New Punitive Approaches Across Europe

This article investigates the emergence of new regulatory trends in the context of human rights accountability - traditionally characterised by soft law and non-binding guidelines -, where in recent times mandatory non-financial disclosure laws have started to impose on multinational companies new legal obligations complemented by sanctions of a different nature and intensity. By comparing three relevant pieces of legislation in the European panorama, this contribution addresses the reasons why also criminal law scholars should pay attention to the evolution of such regulatory framework, as the prospect of punitive mechanisms aimed at holding large companies accountable for human rights violations in their global operations could become, to some extent, less remote.