UROP Project

How does CSR affect firms' access to finance?

Industrialization and globalization pose several ecological and social challenges for societies today. In response to such issues, people have adopted their mind-set, and investors have started to incorporate ecological and social considerations in their investment decisions. Along these lines, businesses feel increasingly obliged to respond to this tendency and have implemented broader social goals in their decision-making. Yet, there is a continuing debate on whether and to what extent a firm can benefit from engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Task

The project aims to analyze whether firms' with superior CSR engagement can benefit from better access to finance - in terms of equity or debt issuance. We will take this question to a global scale by using large samples with international coverage. An international sample will not only allow for a systematic analysis of the relationship across countries, but it will also provide insights into the profound role that institutions play in determining this relationship. As the previous literature mainly investigates the relation between CSR and financial performance either in single-country studies or using datasets from developed countries only, it is not clear whether these results will hold in a different context.

Requirements

good financial and statistical knowledge