Corporate Social Responsibility and Credit Ratings
This study provides evidence on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firms’ credit ratings. We find that credit rating agencies tend to award relatively high ratings to firms with good social performance. This pattern is robust to controlling for key firm characteristic...
| Autores principales: | ; ; ; |
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| Tipo de documento: | Electrónico Artículo |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés |
| Verificar disponibilidad: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Publicado: |
2013
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| En: |
Journal of business ethics
Año: 2013, Volumen: 117, Número: 4, Páginas: 679-694 |
| Otras palabras clave: | B
Business Ethics
B Responsabilidad social de la empresa B Credit ratings |
| Acceso en línea: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Sumario: | This study provides evidence on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firms’ credit ratings. We find that credit rating agencies tend to award relatively high ratings to firms with good social performance. This pattern is robust to controlling for key firm characteristics as well as endogeneity between CSR and credit ratings. We also find that CSR strengths and concerns influence credit ratings and that the individual components of CSR that relate to primary stakeholder management (i.e., community relations, diversity, employee relations, environmental performance, and product characteristics) matter most in explaining firms’ creditworthiness. Overall, our results suggest that CSR performance conveys important non-financial information that rating agencies are likely to use in their evaluation of firms’ creditworthiness, and that CSR investments—particularly those that extend beyond compliance behavior to reflect what is desired by society—can lead to lower financing costs resulting from higher credit ratings. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0697 |
| Obras secundarias: | Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-1714-2 |
