Venture Capital and Corporate Social Responsibility

We examine the impact on venture capital (VC) involvement and monitoring on their portfolio companies' corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. Exploiting the timing of VC exit, we find that CSR performance of VC-backed companies improves after the exit of VC. Using the age of VC funds as an instrument for VC exit, we find that the effect is likely to be causal. We also find that portfolio firms' CSR performance declines after the introduction of direct high speed rail services between VC firms and their portfolio companies. Further analyses suggest that the effect is largely driven by inexperienced, bad performing, and less reputable VCs