IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jfinqa/v55y2020i2p679-706_10.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rhetoric, Reality, and Reputation: Do CSR and Political Lobbying Protect Shareholder Wealth against Environmental Lawsuits?

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Chelsea
  • Cheong, Chee Seng
  • Zurbruegg, Ralf

Abstract

We investigate whether firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) reputations and environmental lobbying efforts protect shareholder wealth in the event of environmental lawsuits. Using a sample of lawsuits filed in United States Federal Courts, we find that firms with superior CSR reputations suffer worse market reactions to environmental allegations. In contrast, lobbying cushions filing-date valuation losses, providing insurance-like protection against lawsuits. Our results are robust to subsample analyses, a falsification test, propensity score matching, and alternative empirical proxies and model specifications.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Chelsea & Cheong, Chee Seng & Zurbruegg, Ralf, 2020. "Rhetoric, Reality, and Reputation: Do CSR and Political Lobbying Protect Shareholder Wealth against Environmental Lawsuits?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 679-706, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:55:y:2020:i:2:p:679-706_10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022109019000073/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Neukirchen, Daniel & Köchling, Gerrit & Posch, Peter N., 2023. "Enforcement of corporate misconduct during Democratic and Republican administrations," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(PA).
    2. Dai, Yunhao & Tong, Xinchu & Wang, Li, 2022. "Workplace safety accident, employee treatment, and firm value: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    3. Wu, Junfeng & Liu, Baohua & Zeng, Yongliang & Luo, Hong, 2022. "Good for the firm, good for the society? Causal evidence of the impact of equity incentives on a firm's green investment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 435-449.
    4. Huang, Robin Hui & Zhang, Linhan, 2023. "The effects of reputational sanctions on culpable firms: Evidence from China’s stock markets," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Md Mosharraf Hossain & Lafang Wang & Jing Yu, 2024. "The reputational costs of corporate environmental underperformance: evidence from China," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 930-948, February.
    6. Wong, Jin Boon & Zhang, Qin, 2024. "ESG reputation risks, cash holdings, and payout policies," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    7. Liu, Chelsea, 2021. "CEO gender and employee relations: Evidence from labor lawsuits," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    8. Liu, Chelsea, 2020. "Judge political affiliation and impacts of corporate environmental litigation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jfinqa:v:55:y:2020:i:2:p:679-706_10. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jfq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.