Multinational investment and voluntary disclosure: Project-level evidence from the petroleum industry

This paper analyzes the multinational enterprise’s decision to voluntarily disclose information regarding its investments, a choice we term investment transparency. When disclosing investment information, managers must weigh the costs and benefits of reducing asymmetries between the firm and three stakeholder audiences: capital markets, civil society and governments. We use a unique transaction-level dataset of reserve acquisitions by oil-industry multinationals compiled by IHS Herold to examine managerial decisions to reveal or withhold value-relevant information about firm investment. Contrary to the agency-theoretic motivations traditionally ascribed to voluntary disclosure, our results suggest institutional and informational factors drive investment transparency. We find that firms disclose less in cross-border transactions, more when societal expectations of transparency are high, and less when faced with political risk. These results should be of interest to scholars of accounting and international business, as well as managers and policy makers involved in the ongoing debate on transparency in the extractive industries.