Corporate social responsibility and financial distress
February 13, 2008 | 1 min read
The study reviews 1,295 U.S. non-financial firms for the 1991-2003 time period. Working from established models of the probability of corporate distress, the study tests whether the addition of an overall social score derived from KLD data can improve their predictive power. This is accomplished via three separate analyses.
Univariate analysis: This demonstrates that “there is a statistically and economically significant difference in the likelihood of default in the next period between the firms in the top quartile (5.05%) and the bottom quartile (11.1%).” Key financial metrics, such as liquidity, operating income/total assets, and retained earnings/total assets are higher for strong CSR performers than for weak ones.
Multivariate analysis: The dependent variable is distance to default (DD) — a calculation of the probability of future default. “After controlling for the accepted accounting and market based determinants of distress, there remains an almost monotonic negative relationship between KLD scores and the probability of distress...the signs are consistent with the interpretation that good firms are less likely to experience financial distress...” This finding was statistically significant at the 1% level.
The author notes that the issue of causality is not addressed by the preceding analysis — “the correlation documented here might ... be explained by healthy firms being those with the luxury to invest in CSR.” A Granger causality analysis is undertaken to disentangle these issues, but fails to “provide any support for normative arguments in favor of CSR.”
This study received an Honorable Mention in the 2007 Moskowitz Prize competition (awarded by the Center for Responsible Business at the
Haas School of Business, in cooperation with the Social Investment Forum, the Moskowitz Prize promotes the concept, practice, and growth of socially responsible investing).
References
This article was previously published on stristudies.org, February 13, 2008.
This article may be reproduced according to our terms of use with attribution (and link, if online) to www.tias.edu. To be cited as: “Monitoring the monitor: evaluating CalPERS’ shareholder activism”, Lloyd Kurtz, www.tias.edu, February 13, 2008.
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