We examine the determinants of and investor responses to corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) bond issuance in Korea. We find that ESG bond issuance is positively associated with firm size and foreign ownership stakes. We also find that firms that establish ESG committees at the...

This paper examines environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance around seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). A firm may improve ESG performance prior to SEOs to the extent that it believes that investors will be more favorable to firms with better ESG performance (window-dressing...

This paper examines corporate carbon-offsetting, in which firms compensate for carbon emissions by financing carbon-reduction projects elsewhere. Analyzing offset purchase disclosures by Korean firms during the 2011-2019 period, we examine what drives companies to buy offsets and what effects...

We examine the effects of taxes on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Employing a tax reform in Korea that imposed a new tax on cash retention, we find that treated firms improve CSR performance after the tax reform was enacted. This result is driven by improvement in environmental and...

We hypothesize that firms are incentivized to manage corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategically as a result of social pressure, uncertain value implications, and investors' reliance on delimited measures of CSR performance. To test our hypotheses, we analyze Korean firms, whose ratings...

We investigate the effects of incentive-alignment mechanisms on voluntary disclosure of carbon emissions in Korea, a latecomer in incorporating environmental practices into business operations. We consider in particular the effects of corporate governance and compensation mechanisms. We find...