Motivated by agency theory, we explore the effect of corporate governance quality on corporate social responsibility (CSR), using the governance standards provided by the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Our evidence reveals that firms with more effective governance make significantly...

We explore how powerful CEOs view investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR). The agency view suggests that CEOs invest in CSR to enhance their own private benefits. On the contrary, the conflict resolution view argues that CSR investments are made to resolve the conflicts among...

“Lucky” CEOs are given stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing, severe agency problems, and poor corporate governance (Bebchuk, Grinstein, Peyer, 2010). We find that lucky (opportunistic) CEOs invest...

Motivated by the on-going debate on the costs and benefits of CSR, we explore how talented managers view CSR investments. Based on nearly 20,000 observations across 17 years, our evidence reveals a non-monotonic effect of managerial talent on CSR. Exploiting a novel measure of managerial ability...