Paper Disclosure Regulation, Corruption, and Investment: Evidence from Natural Resource Extraction

I examine how mandatory extraction payment disclosures (EPD) ─ a policy solution intended to discourage corporate payment avoidance in the oil, gas, and mining industries ─ affect fiscal revenue contributions and investments by multinational firms in foreign host countries. Using the staggered adoption of EPD across firms headquartered in Europe and Canada, I find that disclosing companies increase their payments to host governments, decrease investments, and obtain fewer extraction licenses relative to non-disclosing competitors. These effects are stronger for firms that face a high risk of public shaming, operate in corrupt host countries, and have a high exposure to bribery-prone payments, suggesting that EPD increases the reputational cost of corporate behavior that could be perceived as exploitative. The resulting reallocation of investments from disclosing to non-disclosing firms reduces drilling productivity and resource production in host countries, consistent with uneven disclosure regulation distorting capital allocation.

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• Authored by Thomas Rauter
• 2019
• Political Economy