We consider a principal-agent model in which the agent needs to raise capital from the principal to finance a project. Our model is based on DeMarzo and Fishman (2003), except that the agent's cash flows are given by a Brownian motion with drift in continuous time. The difficulty in writing an...

We investigate the relationship between accumulated experience completing wind power projects and the cost of installing wind projects in the U.S. from 2001-2015. Our modeling framework disentangles accumulated experience from input price changes, scale economies, and exogenous technical change;...

This paper contributes to the understanding of how to maximize the impact of publicly provided climate finance to leverage the private sector. Agencies seeking to promote private investment in support of climate change mitigation and adaptation may have a choice between subsidizing projects or...

International environment and development agencies increasingly emphasize external cofinancing when selecting projects to fund. This paper considers whether the emphasis on cofinancing helps promote institutional objectives, or creates perverse and inefficient incentives. We present a model of...

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...

We conduct a field experiment in partnership with the largest job platform in Brazil to study how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices of firms affect talent allocation. We find both an average job-seeker's preference for ESG and a large degree of heterogeneity across...

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...

We study a model in which corporate social responsibility (CSR) arises as a response to inefficient regulation. In our model, firms, governments, and workers interact. Firms generate profits but create negative spillovers that can be attenuated through government regulation, which is set...

Three reasons are often cited for the value of corporate social responsibility: product quality signalling, delegated giving, and the halo effect. Previous tests cannot separate these channels because they focus on consumers, who value all three. We focus on prosecutors, who are only susceptible...

We find support for two key predictions of an agency theory of unproductive corporate social responsibility. First, increasing managerial ownership decreases measures of firm goodness. We use the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut to increase after-tax insider ownership. Firms with moderate levels of insider...