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Determinants of Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting of Rail Companies: Does State Ownership Matter?

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New Trends in Public Sector Reporting

Part of the book series: Public Sector Financial Management ((PUSEFIMA))

Abstract

This study examines the determinants of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure performance of publicly traded rail companies, with a particular focus on government ownership. Based on a sample of 33 publicly traded rail companies from 9 countries over the 2007–2017 period, our findings suggest that government ownership has a positive association with ESG disclosure performance. This finding is valid when we check for the majority and minority government stakes. With respect to the control variables, our analyses reveal that board size, percentage of independent directors, company size, and financial leverage have a positive linkage with ESG disclosure scores, whereas higher profitability and tangibility ratios and being established in a common law country tend to decrease ESG disclosure performance.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We should note both Lipton and Lorsch (1992) and Jensen (1993) maintain that board size should not exceed a threshold value to prevent possible communication and coordination problems.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Aviation Management, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Ankara, Turkey

    İsmail Çağrı Özcan

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  1. İsmail Çağrı Özcan
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Correspondence to İsmail Çağrı Özcan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics Management and Institutions, University of Naples Federico II, Napoli, Italy

    Francesca Manes-Rossi

  2. Department of Management Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Rebecca Levy Orelli

Appendix

Appendix

Table 2 Sample railway companies
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Table 3 Descriptive statistics
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Table 4 Correlation matrix
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Özcan, İ.Ç. (2020). Determinants of Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting of Rail Companies: Does State Ownership Matter?. In: Manes-Rossi, F., Levy Orelli, R. (eds) New Trends in Public Sector Reporting. Public Sector Financial Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40056-9_8

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