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Research#

Working Papers#

  • "Real Effects of Aggregate Information: Evidence from Environmental Investments", Job Market Paper, single-authored.
    Draft availabe upon request.  ▶ Play a Google NotebookLM Summary
    Summary
    Source: RDC of the Federal Statistical Office and Statistical Offices of the Federal States, DOI: 10.21242/32511.2017.00.03.1.1.0, own calculations.

    Firms rely on individual peer disclosures to guide investments, but whether they respond to aggregate, industry-wide information is less understood. This paper examines how firms adjust their environmental investments in response to the disclosure of aggregate peer data in statistical reports. My analyses are based on proprietary data covering about 8,000 German firms from 2006 to 2014, exploiting a disclosure change in 2009 that affected one investment type. I find that, following the disclosure change, firms increase their emission reduction investments by 24% relative to the other six environmental investment types whose aggregate disclosure remains unchanged. This net increase masks shifts in firm behavior: firms that had previously invested below (above) the industry average tend to increase (decrease) their investments, suggesting that firms view the industry average as a better-informed peer benchmark. A complementary survey experiment indicates that information processing costs limit the efficient use of statistical reports, highlighting an important friction in the integration of aggregate disclosures into firm decisions.

  • "How Do Firms Weigh Off Financial and Environmental Factors in B2B Contracting?", with Jannis Bischof, Yuhan Liu, & Davud Rostam-Afschar, 2025.
    Draft will follow.
    Summary
    Will follow soon.

    Firms value non-financial information in their supply chain contracting decisions, however, how financial and non-financial information interact has yet to be fully explored. We examine how firms weigh off financial and environmental information in supply chain contracting using a discrete choice experiment. Surveying 3,172 firm representatives in Germany, we find that financial characteristics are 4.7 times more influential than environmental characteristics when selecting a business partner. Interestingly, firms prefer environmental disclosure over non-disclosure, even when environmental performance is weak, consistent with ambiguity aversion: a lack of transparency is penalized more than poor performance itself. Further cross-sectional analyses show that for firms actively engaged in sustainability, strong environmental performance partially offsets weak financial performance, reflecting an environmental insurance effect. In contrast, firms under regulatory pressure prioritize financial strength without compromise.

  • "Stock Market Reaction to Product-Level Carbon Estimates", with Thomas Bourveau & Clemens Lauer, 2025, R&R at Communications Earth & Environment (Nature Portfolio).
    SSRN
    Summary
    Number of Media Articles around the Event Day of Bourveau et al. (2025)

    We leverage the sudden introduction of salient flight-level carbon estimates provided by Google Flights. Using an event-study research design, we document an initial market reaction, with airline market values declining by around 2% following the release of the granular information. The decrease in market value is more pronounced for airlines with older fleets and is muted for airlines in China where Google Flights is not available. We interpret these findings as evidence that the equity market responds to changes in expected demand once consumers receive context-specific information about their carbon footprint. From a policy perspective, our findings indicate that the relevant level of information disaggregation differs among stakeholders. Further, they suggest that presenting information within a decision-making context to consumers is important for investors to price consumers' expected preferences.

Work in Progress#