University shareholder engagement and sustainability-related disclosure

We design a field experiment to test whether a small university endowment can elicit greater corporate carbon emissions disclosure through shareholder engagement. We directly engage with 51 target firms on their carbon emissions disclosure policies. About one-third of the engaged firms respond favorably to the engagement requests. Examining university-specific covariates, we find that engagements from the rector or treasurer appeared more likely to elicit positive responses than those from professors. We also find that firms respond more favorably when they are located geographically closer to the university. Overall, the analysis suggests that university endowments can promote sustainability-related disclosure through shareholder engagement despite having only negligible equity stakes in firms.