Motivated by the public debate regarding corporate responsibility, we construct a memory-based model of decision-making to illustrate how corporate and political communication can impact policy preferences. We test the predictions of our model in a new large-scale survey of U.S. citizens on...

This paper analyzes the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the total provision of public goods in a framework in which consumers who may make such voluntary contributions to public goods via CSR are also voters who decide on the level of taxes to finance publicly provided public...

In recent years, impact investors - private investors who seek to generate simultaneously financial and social returns - have attracted intense interest and controversy. We analyze a novel, comprehensive data set of impact and traditional investors to assess how the non-financial characteristics...

The growing discussions of impact investing and stakeholder capitalism have increased interest in measuring companies' social impact. We conceptualize corporate social impact as the welfare loss that would be caused by a firm's exit. To illustrate, we quantify the social impacts of 74 firms in...

Institutional investors are less likely to support shareholder proposals involving environmental and social issues for firms headquartered in Republican-led states. The lower support concentrates in recent years, when politicians became more vocal about firms' social responsibility activities,...

We present several empirical facts about trends in marketing investment in the US. We also present estimates of the private value of brands to firms and aggregate intangible brand capital stocks created by these investments. These investments include the creation and maintenance of a brand name...

What is the impact of regulatory reforms that enhance credit market efficiency on children's human capital? Using a parent-child panel dataset, we find that such reforms reduced children's academic performance in low-income families. Consistent with the view that financial development entices...

We study how environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing reshapes information aggregation by prices. We develop a rational expectations equilibrium model in which traditional and green investors are informed about financial and ESG risks but have different preferences over them. Because...

This study provides an economic analysis of the determinants and consequences of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability reporting. To frame our analysis, we consider a widespread mandatory adoption of CSR reporting standards in the United States. The study focuses on the...

We develop theory and a tightly-linked field experiment to explore the supply side implications of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our natural field experiment, in which we created our own firm and hired actual workers, generates a rich data set on worker behavior and responses to both...