CEO Managerial Ability and the Strategic Repetition of Climate Disclosures

Abstract

<p>This study examines whether CEO managerial ability shapes the repetition of firms' climate-related disclosures in mandatory 10-K filings. Climate reporting is highly judgment based and central to firms' broader climate-risk management strategies, yet little is known about why some firms repeatedly use similar climate narratives and others revise them extensively. Using 12,533 US firm-year observations from 2005 to 2023, we measure climate-disclosure repetition through four dictionary-based similarity metrics and an AI-based semantic embedding approach. CEO ability is captured using an efficiency-adjusted managerial ability score. The results show that firms led by higher-ability CEOs provide more repetitive climate narratives over time. These findings remain robust across matching procedures, entropy balancing, within-year disclosure-alignment tests, lagged-ability models, and change-on-change specifications. Overall, the study highlights managerial capability as an important driver of firms' long-term climate-communication strategies and introduces intertemporal repetition as a novel dimension of climate-disclosure practice.<br></p>