Stock Market Liberalization and Corporate ESG Information Disclosure:A Quasi-natural Experiment Based on A-shares Inclusion in MSCI Index
This paper takes the exogenous shock of China A shares'inclusion into MSCI Emerging Markets index as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the impact of stock market liberalization on corporate ESG information disclosure by the DID model.We find that the inclusion of A shares in the MSCI index significantly promotes corporate ESG information disclosure.This effect is particularly pronounced in companies with higher overseas operating income ratio enterprises,private enterprises and worse information environment enterprises as well as no pre-existing foreign ownership enterprises.Mechanism analysis results show that the inclusion of A shares into MSCI index improves corporate ESG information disclosure through improving foreign institutional investors'corporate site visits and active information communication between foreign investors and companies'managers.This paper enriches the research on the influencing factors of corporate ESG information disclosure and provides policy reference for China to expedite the process of capital market integration with the global market and improve corporate ESG information disclosure.