We investigate how independent directors view corporate social responsibility (CSR). Exploiting the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and the associated exchange listing requirements as an exogenous regulatory shock, we document that independent directors view CSR activities unfavorably....

We explore the effect of board independence on CSR investments during a stressful time, i.e. during the Great Recession. Our results show that independent directors exhibit an unfavorable view of CSR investments during the crisis. Stronger board independence leads to a significant reduction in...

Motivated by agency theory, we investigate the effect of managerial ownership on CSR engagement. Exploiting Lewbel's (2012) heteroskedastic identification and using a large U.S. sample of over 14,000 observations across 18 years, we find that higher managerial ownership diminishes CSR engagement...

We investigate the effect of political risk on shareholder value, using an event study and a novel measure of firm-level political risk recently developed by Hassan et al. (2019). We exploit the guilty plea of Jack Abramoff, a well-known lobbyist, on January 3, 2006, as an exogenous shock that...

Leveraging as a quasi-natural experiment the staggered passage of universal demand laws, which raise the difficulty of shareholder lawsuits, we examine the effect of shareholder litigation rights on ESG controversies. Our difference-in-difference estimates show that an exogenous decline in...

Exploiting an exogenous shock that diminishes the shareholder litigation risk for certain firms, we examine the effect of litigation risk on corporate social responsibility. In particular, we take advantage of an unexpected ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court that raised the difficulty of...

We explore the role of female directors in mitigating CEO luck. CEOs are “lucky” when they receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing. Our results show that board gender diversity significantly deters the...

Capitalizing on a distinctive measure of corporate culture obtained from sophisticated machine learning, we investigate the concept of cultural diversification. A firm is culturally diversified if it is characterized by a variety of diverse cultural attributes. Motivated by agency theory, we...

The quiet life hypothesis argues that, when managers are insulated from the discipline of the takeover market, they tend to be less ambitious, avoiding risky and complex investments that require more managerial time and efforts. In other words, they prefer to live a “quiet life”. Exploiting...

Exploiting a distinctive measure of corporate culture based on advanced machine learning, we investigate the effect of board gender diversity on corporate culture. Our results demonstrate that greater board gender diversity considerably strengthens positive corporate culture. The findings...