This paper explores the connection between corporate social responsibility intensity and the political affiliation of elite management and lower-level personnel and offers evidence that CSR initiatives are frequently driven from the bottom up by employees actively expressing their sociopolitical...

This paper examines whether the initiation of Vigeo Corporate Social Performance (CSP) rating impacts company profiles. Using a sample of European listed firms, we confirm that there is a positive and significant relationship between CSP rating and a firm's liquidity and investor base....

This study examines whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) reduces information asymmetry (IA). Using a firm-level CSR dataset of Australian publicly listed firms from 2004 to 2014, we estimate IA models using a fixed-effects panel estimator. We find that CSR performance is negatively...

We review the literature on ESG and Socially Responsible Investment with a special focus on fixed income investments. Most of the academic research is focused on the link between corporate CSR and ESG activities, investors' SR engagement and stock returns and firm value. Very few studies examine...

This paper develops a risk-management view of CSR by arguing that CSR provides insurance-like effects in adverse corporate events. Since passive investors have diversified away most idiosyncratic risks, we predict that they demand less CSR as a strategic approach to manage risks. Using the...

Prior research suggests that the media plays an important information intermediary role in capital markets. We investigate the role of the media in influencing firms' engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Using a large sample of 4,396 unique firms from 42 countries over...

Based on a large international sample, we examine the effects of CSR on the cost of equity under different levels of investor protection. In countries where investor protection is strong (poor), our results show that the cost of equity falls (rises) when a firm invests in CSR. Our findings are...

This paper studies whether institutional investors influence corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies and the impact of such influence on firm performance. We use facility-level toxic release data to proxy for a firm's ESG policies. We use geographic distance and the size...

Research summary: Drawing on the “varieties of capitalism” literature, we develop an actor-centered framework that explains firm-level corporate social performance (CSP) by emphasizing the importance of considering owners' and other stakeholders' motives towards CSP — which can be...