We study the effect of corporate cultural similarity on merger decisions and outcomes. Using the similarity in firms' corporate social responsibility characteristics to proxy for cultural similarity, we find that culturally similar firms are more likely to merge. Moreover, these mergers are...

We study the pace at which socially responsible investors can induce firms to reduce negative externalities in private capital markets. Investors with broad preferences, who care about firm externalities independent of their ownership in the firm, value acquiring firms with high production...

This paper documents a negative effect of institutional cross-blockholding on portfolio firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. Our baseline results show that cross-held firms perform worse in CSR than non-cross-held firms do. A quasi-natural experiment based on mergers...

While practitioners call for long-term managerial compensation to promote firms’ commitment in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, little direct evidence exists on the role managerial incentive horizon plays in firms’ ESG performance. Exploiting two alternative identification...

We investigate the predictive power of corporate social culture, as measured by corporate social responsibility (CSR) intensity, on shareholder wealth when mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are carried out by managers with different traits. We find acquiring firms with talented managers are more...

Using archival material and underutilized printed sources this article provides an intellectual history of Milton Friedman’s critique of corporate social responsibility. This evidence demonstrates how his arguments developed within the context of ‘neoliberal’ discussion in Europe and the...

Investment funds that claim to focus on socially responsible stocks have proliferated in recent times. In this paper, we verify whether ESG mutual funds actually invest in firms that have stakeholder-friendly track records. Using a comprehensive sample of self-labelled ESG mutual funds in the US...

We examine the effects of CSR information on stakeholder decision-making, specifically on supply-chain contracting decisions. To obtain plausibly exogenous variation in CSR information, we exploit the 2017 CSR rating coverage expansion from Russell 1000 to Russell 2000 firms (hereafter,...

Motivated by the public debate regarding corporate responsibility, we construct a memory-based cognitive model of decision making to illustrate how corporate and political communication can impact policy preferences. We test the predictions of our model in a new large-scale experimental survey...

We study whether firm managers’ physical appearance affects their decisions on corporate philanthropy. Examining a large sample of corporate donations matched with managers’ attractiveness data, we find that male managers’ motivations for philanthropic giving are driven by their physical...