Corporate Environmental Responsibility and the Cost of Capital: International Evidence

We examine how corporate environmental responsibility (CER) affects the cost of equity capital for manufacturing firms in 30 countries. Using several approaches to estimate firms’ ex ante equity financing costs, we find in regressions that control for firm-level characteristics as well as industry,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics
Authors: El Ghoul, Sadok (Author) ; Guedhami, Omrane (Author) ; Kim, Hakkon (Author) ; Park, Kwangwoo (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2018
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2018, Volume: 149, Issue: 2, Pages: 335-361
Further subjects:B M14
B Firm risk
B Environmental risk management
B G32
B Corporate environmental responsibility
B Environmental liability risk
B Cost of equity capital
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Description
Summary:We examine how corporate environmental responsibility (CER) affects the cost of equity capital for manufacturing firms in 30 countries. Using several approaches to estimate firms’ ex ante equity financing costs, we find in regressions that control for firm-level characteristics as well as industry, year, and country effects that the cost of equity capital is lower when firms have higher CER. This finding is robust to addressing endogeneity through instrumental variables, to using alternative specifications and proxies for the cost of equity capital, and to accounting for noise in analyst forecasts. We conclude that investment in CER reduces firms’ equity financing costs worldwide.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-015-3005-6