We examine how corporate environmental responsibility (CER) affects the cost of equity capital for manufacturing firms in 30 countries. Using several approaches to estimate firms' ex ante equity financing costs, we find in regressions that control for firm-level characteristics as well as...

Financial instability, financial crises, and business frauds cause a loss of society confidence on firms. Similarly, the economic uncertainty increased as a result of the social problems, such as rapid consumption of natural resources, climate change, water scarcity, violation of human rights....

We investigate the circumstances under which socially responsible investing (SRI) enhances firm long-term financial performance, and therefore provides incentives for firms to self-regulate their environmental performance. Aggregating portfolios across SRI mutual funds, we estimate the effect of...