It is frequently hypothesized that environmental management systems (EMSs) may improve a firm's environmental performance. Whether or not this hypothesis is true is as important from the perspective of environmental policy as questions relating to the relevant incentives for (1) a firm's voluntary adoption of an EMS and (2) its environmental innovation behavior. Based on ample empirical evidence for German manufacturing, this paper addresses these issues on the basis of a recursive bivariate probit model that explicitly takes into account that a facility's decision on innovation activities is correlated with the decision on EMS certification. Our empirical results indicate that environmental innovation activities are not associated with EMS certification nor any other single policy instrument. Rather, innovation behavior seems to be correlated to the stringency of environmental policy.

As financial reporting and disclosure are potentially important means for management to communicate firm s performance and value to outside investors, increased disclosure practices will help in reducing information gap between firm and its stakeholders.

Judging by the sheer number of papers reviewed in this Handbook, the empirical analysis of firms' financing and investment decisions—empirical corporate finance—has become a dominant field in financial economics. The growing interest in everything "corporate is fueled by a healthy combination of fundamental theoretical developments and recent widespread access to large transactional data bases. A less scientific—but nevertheless important—source of inspiration is a growing awareness of the important social implications of corporate behavior and governance. This Handbook takes stock of the main empirical findings to date across an unprecedented spectrum of corporate finance issues, ranging from econometric methodology, to raising capital and capital structure choice, and to managerial incentives and corporate investment behavior. The surveys are written by leading empirical researchers that remain active in their respective areas of interest. With few exceptions, the writing style makes the chapters accessible to industry practitioners. For doctoral students and seasoned academics, the surveys offer dense roadmaps into the empirical research landscape and provide suggestions for future work.*The Handbooks in Finance series offers a broad group of outstanding volumes in various areas of finance*Each individual volume in the series should present an accurate self-contained survey of a sub-field of finance*The series is international in scope with contributions from field leaders the world over

The underlying theme of Accounting and Accountability remains the role of corporate social and environmental reporting in meeting the demands for greater corporate social responsibility and accountability. However, transformations in the social climate coupled with developments in critical accounting theory have necessitated a substantial change in content. In advocating corporate social reporting as a practical and ethical alternative to conventional accounting practice, the text presents a stimulating and candid perspective on the changes and challenges within. Accounting and Accountability is written for practitioners, academics, researchers and students of financial accounting and reporting, accounting theory and accounting ethics.

Irreversible investment is especially sensitive to such risk factors as volatile exchange rates and uncertainty about tariff structures and future cash flows. If the goal of macroeconomic policy is to stimulate investment, stability and credibility may be more important than tax incentives or interest rates.

For researchers and managers interested in performance measurement, this volume includes innovative research that sheds light on topics such as the determinants of disclosure quality, the identification of appropriate metrics, the relationship among the different disclosure mechanisms and between voluntary and mandatory disclosure, and many more.