About

Mark Zakota is an Assistant Professor of Accounting and Information Assurance at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, where his dissertation focused on 'EPA Scrutiny and Voluntary Environmental Disclosures,' reflecting his research interest in corporate disclosures and regulatory issues. His academic background also includes studies in international business and politics at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. His research explores disclosures, standard setting, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues through the use of natural language processing, machine learning, and XBRL. Notably, his work examines the impact of EPA scrutiny on firms' voluntary environmental disclosures, revealing that EPA scrutiny is associated with a reduction in environmental disclosures, especially among firms lacking environmental expert directors. His findings shed light on the frictions that restrict the flow of environmental information to market participants, contributing valuable insights into disclosure practices and regulatory effects.

Research topics

• Business
• Finance
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Accounting
• Actuarial science
• Economics
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Painting the Resumes: Employee LinkedIn Revisions and Future Firm Performance

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• EPA scrutiny and voluntary environmental disclosures

  Review of Accounting Studies · 2025-07-17 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Market participants have called on the SEC to address the lack of disclosures about firms’ environmental impacts, investments, and exposures. However, the frictions that obstruct the flow of environmental information are not well understood. I shed light on these frictions by examining whether scrutiny by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) restricts the firm’s voluntary environmental disclosures in earnings conference calls. Consistent with the notion that EPA scrutiny gives rise to disclosure frictions, I find a negative relation between EPA scrutiny and the environmental disclosures of scrutinized firms. This negative relation is concentrated among firms without environmental expert directors, suggesting that environmental governance mitigates the chilling effect of EPA scrutiny. In terms of disclosure quality, I show that environmental disclosures include fewer quantitative details under EPA scrutiny. Collectively, these findings provide insights into the frictions that restrict the flow of environmental information to market participants, an important issue given the SEC’s efforts to improve current disclosure practices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Lenders’ Demand for Consolidating Financial Statements from Parent Borrowers

  Journal of Financial Reporting · 2025-02-19

  article

  ABSTRACT For financial reporting, a parent corporation is required to provide consolidated financial statements, treating the parent and its majority-owned subsidiaries as one reporting entity. Loan contracts, however, are signed by legal entities. We investigate when lenders explicitly require a parent borrower to periodically provide consolidating financial statements—disaggregated information with the parent’s information in the first column and the consolidated information in the last column—during the term of a loan. We find that 28.1 percent of the loan contracts include this covenant. The covenant is more likely when borrower-lender information asymmetry is higher; the loan is secured by collaterals or subsidiary pledges or guaranteed by subsidiaries; the borrower has heterogeneous subsidiaries or is smaller; or the loan has a revolving line of credit, fewer lenders, or a longer duration. Our findings suggest that lenders use contracting features to address the loss of information in the consolidated financial reporting model. Data Availability: All data are available from identified public sources. JEL Classifications: M2; M4; G3.

  PublisherDOI

• Lenders' Demand for Consolidating Financial Statements from Parent Borrowers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Lenders’ Environmental Monitoring: Evidence From Environmental Covenants in Private Loan Contracts

  Journal of Accounting Auditing & Finance · 2024 · 6 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Finance

  We investigate the role of covenants in private loan contracts that place requirements or limitations on borrowers’ environmental actions (hereafter, “environmental covenants”). Utilizing a machine learning algorithm, we find that environmental covenants are highly prevalent, appearing in 54% of loan contracts in our sample. The use of these covenants is significantly associated with borrowers’ environmental risk exposure, borrower–lender information asymmetry, and key contract terms, such as collateral and loan maturity. The association between environmental risk and environmental covenants is more pronounced when borrowers face greater financial distress, lenders have a stronger reputation, and there is a higher risk of regulatory enforcement. Additional analysis shows that the presence of a board committee overseeing environmental matters reduces lenders’ demand to contractually address the borrower’s environmental risk. Collectively, our results provide novel insights into the contractual mechanisms addressing environmental risk and the factors shaping lenders’ environmental monitoring demand.

  PublisherDOI

• The Decision-Usefulness of ASC 606 Revenue Disaggregation

  The Accounting Review · 2023 · 22 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Business
  • Accounting

  ABSTRACT The disclosure requirements of ASC 606 significantly expanded the volume and granularity of revenue information. However, because of the significant judgment associated with the standard, it is unclear whether the new disclosures increased the decision-usefulness of financial reports. To shed light on this question, we investigate the revenue disaggregation requirements of ASC 606. These requirements had significant disclosure consequences, illustrated by an over two-fold increase in the median number of revenue items in disaggregating firms’ reports. Consistent with enhanced decision-usefulness, we find higher (lower) analyst sales forecast accuracy (dispersion) for disaggregating firms. These benefits are primarily present when disaggregation is accompanied by detailed qualitative disclosures, when disaggregated revenues are comparable, and when the granularity of segment information is low. Our study contributes to research evaluating ASC 606 and offers valuable insights to standard-setters currently considering broader disaggregation of income statement items (Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) 2022). Data Availability: Data are available from the sources identified in the paper. JEL Classifications: G24; G30; G34.

  PublisherDOI

• The Decision-Usefulness of ASC 606 Revenue Disaggregation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022 · 16 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Finance
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lisa A. Hinson

  University of Florida

  2 shared

• Gabriel Pündrich

  University of Florida

  2 shared

• Jenny Wu Tucker

  1 shared

• Ruby Lee

  University of Florida

  1 shared

• Nicholas Krupa

  1 shared

• Ying Zhou

  1 shared