Both borrowers and lenders can be socially responsible (SR). Ethical banks commit to financing only ethical projects, which have social profitability but lower expected revenues than standard projects. Instead, no credible commitment exists for SR borrowers. The matching between SR borrowers and...

High-quality firms sometimes under-invest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) compared to lower quality firms. We show that information asymmetry in product quality could explain this behavior. Specifically, in a monopoly with information asymmetry, if only a small fraction of consumers is...

Is green consumerism beneficial to the environment and the economy? To shed light on this question, we study the political economy of environmental regulations in a model with neutral and green consumers where the latter derive some warm glow from buying a good of higher environmental quality...

Is green consumerism beneficial to the environment and the economy? To shed light on this question, we study the political economy of environmental regulations in a model with neutral and green consumers where the latter derive some warm glow from buying a good of higher environmental quality...

Ecological citizens are increasingly encouraged to adopt ‘precautionary consumption' – a set of practices aimed at shielding them from the potential health harms of exposures to everyday toxics. The utility and the effects of precautionary consumption in relation to common chemical exposures...

This paper analyzes the interplay between firms' self-regulation (often denoted as corporate social responsibility) as opposed to the formal regulation of a negative externality. Firms respond to increasing activism in the market (conscious consumers that take into account the external effects...

Many consumers care about climate change and other externalities associated with their purchases. We analyze the behavior and market effects of such "socially responsible consumers" in three parts. First, we develop a flexible theoretical framework to study competitive equilibria with rational...