Corporate Social Responsibility: Is it Rewarded by the Corporate Bond Market? A Critical Note

The question of whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) has a positive impact on firm value has been almost exclusively analysed from the perspective of the stock market. We have therefore investigated the relationship between the valuation of Euro corporate bonds and the standards of CSR of m...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Menz, Klaus-Michael (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2010
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2010, Volume: 96, Issue: 1, Pages: 117-134
Further subjects:B Corporate Citizenship
B Social Performance
B Corporate social responsibility
B corporate bond evaluation
B Sustainability
B Triple Bottom Line
B credit spreads
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:The question of whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) has a positive impact on firm value has been almost exclusively analysed from the perspective of the stock market. We have therefore investigated the relationship between the valuation of Euro corporate bonds and the standards of CSR of mainly European companies for the first time in this article. Generally, the debt market exhibits a considerable weight for corporate finance, for which reason creditors should basically play a significant role in the transmission of CSR into the valuation of financial instruments. Given that socially responsible firms are often regarded as economically more successful and less risky, they should have lower risk premia. The results of the empirical analysis, however, reveal that based on an extensive data panel the risk premium for socially responsible firms – according to the classification by SAM Group – was ceterius paribus higher than for non-socially responsible companies. However, only one case of the models investigated was weakly significant. Thus, largely the relationship has to be classified as marginal; so CSR has apparently not yet been incorporated into the pricing of corporate bonds.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-010-0452-y