Researchers debate whether environmental investments reduce firm value or can actually improve financial performance. We provide some first evidence on shareholder wealth effects of voluntary corporate environmental initiatives. Companies announcing membership in Climate Leaders and Ceres - two...

When stakeholder protection is left to the voluntary initiative of managers, relations with social activists may become an effective entrenchment strategy for inefficient CEOs. We thus argue that managerial turnover and firm value are increased by the institutionalization of stakeholder...

We study the extent to which a firm’s social capital, as measured by the intensity of a firm’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, affects firm performance during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We find that high-CSR firms have crisis-period stock returns that are four to five...

We study the relationship between employee satisfaction and abnormal stock returns around the world, using lists of the “Best Companies to Work For” in 14 countries. We show that employee satisfaction is associated with positive abnormal returns in countries with high labor market...

This paper presents an industry equilibrium model where firms can choose to engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. We model CSR activities as an investment in customer loyalty and show that CSR decreases systematic risk and increases firm value. These effects are stronger...

We explore how fiscal policies in the OECD have responded to unexpected information about the economy during the period 1995-2006. In particular, we first estimate standard fiscal rules using ex-ante data (i.e. forecasts). We then estimate how fiscal policy reacts to new information, especially...

In situations where a sequence of forecasts is observed, a common strategy is to examine ‘rationality’ conditional on a given loss function. We examine this from a different perspective - supposing that we have a family of loss functions indexed by unknown shape parameters, then given the...

The development of the unemployment rate differs substantially between OECD countries. In recent years some countries have experienced a mild increase, other countries have had a stable unemployment rate, while there are also ‘successful’ countries in which the unemployment rate has...

This paper studies whether the dynamic behaviour of GNP growth, unemployment and inflation is systematically affected by the timing of elections and changes of government. The sample includes the last three decades in 18 OECD economies. We test explicitly the implications of several models of...

This Paper estimates the effect on international trade of three multilateral organizations intended to increase trade: 1) the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor the Generalized Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); 2) the International Monetary Fund (IMF); and 3) the...