IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v66y2021ics0929119920302868.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are hedge funds' charitable donations strategic?

Author

Listed:
  • Agarwal, Vikas
  • Lu, Yan
  • Ray, Sugata

Abstract

We study whether hedge funds make charitable donations to further their business interests. We find that donations are driven by poor fund flows and performance. Post-donation, donor funds experience lower outflows compared to matched non-donors. One-off donations and donations to charities which hold fundraising events catering to the hedge fund community are more likely to mitigate outflows after poor performance. These findings are consistent with strategic motivations driving at least some donations. While the economics of donations initially appear quite favorable to the hedge funds, the benefits from donations are not scalable. Moreover, investors punish donors through greater redemptions if poor performance persists post-donation.

Suggested Citation

  • Agarwal, Vikas & Lu, Yan & Ray, Sugata, 2021. "Are hedge funds' charitable donations strategic?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:66:y:2021:i:c:s0929119920302868
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2020.101842
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929119920302868
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2020.101842?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zak, Paul J & Knack, Stephen, 2001. "Trust and Growth," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(470), pages 295-321, April.
    2. Nicolas P. B. Bollen & Veronika K. Pool, 2012. "Suspicious Patterns in Hedge Fund Returns and the Risk of Fraud," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(9), pages 2673-2702.
    3. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    4. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2785-2815, December.
    5. La Porta, Rafael, et al, 1997. "Trust in Large Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 333-338, May.
    6. Giovanni Cespa & Giacinta Cestone, 2007. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Managerial Entrenchment," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 741-771, September.
    7. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2004. "The Role of Social Capital in Financial Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(3), pages 526-556, June.
    8. William Fung & David A. Hsieh & Narayan Y. Naik & Tarun Ramadorai, 2008. "Hedge Funds: Performance, Risk, and Capital Formation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(4), pages 1777-1803, August.
    9. Alok Kumar & Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi & Oliver G. Spalt, 2015. "What's in a Name? Mutual Fund Flows When Managers Have Foreign-Sounding Names," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(8), pages 2281-2321.
    10. Frederick L. Bereskin & Terry L. Campbell II & Po-Hsuan Hsu, 2016. "Corporate Philanthropy, Research Networks, and Collaborative Innovation," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 45(1), pages 175-206, March.
    11. Lauren Cohen & Christopher Malloy & Lukasz Pomorski, 2012. "Decoding Inside Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(3), pages 1009-1043, June.
    12. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2009. "Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 124(3), pages 1095-1131.
    13. Fung, William & Hsieh, David A., 2000. "Performance Characteristics of Hedge Funds and Commodity Funds: Natural vs. Spurious Biases," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 291-307, September.
    14. Agarwal, Vikas & Green, T. Clifton & Ren, Honglin, 2018. "Alpha or beta in the eye of the beholder: What drives hedge fund flows?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(3), pages 417-434.
    15. Leonard Kostovetsky, 2016. "Whom Do You Trust?: Investor-Advisor Relationships and Mutual Fund Flows," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(4), pages 898-936.
    16. Brown, Stephen & Goetzmann, William & Liang, Bing & Schwarz, Christopher, 2012. "Trust and delegation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 221-234.
    17. Nicholas Bloom & Raffaella Sadun, 2012. "The Organization of Firms Across Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(4), pages 1663-1705.
    18. Stephen Brown & William Goetzmann & Bing Liang & Christopher Schwarz, 2008. "Estimating Operational Risk for Hedge Funds: The ?-Score," Yale School of Management Working Papers amz2559, Yale School of Management, revised 11 Sep 2009.
    19. Gao, Meng & Huang, Jiekun, 2016. "Capitalizing on Capitol Hill: Informed trading by hedge fund managers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(3), pages 521-545.
    20. Agarwal, Vikas & Arisoy, Y. Eser & Naik, Narayan Y., 2017. "Volatility of aggregate volatility and hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 491-510.
    21. Mara Faccio, 2006. "Politically Connected Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 369-386, March.
    22. Arthur Gautier & Anne-Claire Pache, 2015. "Research on Corporate Philanthropy: A Review and Assessment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 126(3), pages 343-369, February.
    23. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "Trusting the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2557-2600, December.
    24. Diego Gambetta & Wojtek Przepiorka, 2014. "Natural and Strategic Generosity as Signals of Trustworthiness," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(5), pages 1-9, May.
    25. Ronald W. Masulis & Syed Walid Reza, 2015. "Agency Problems of Corporate Philanthropy," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(2), pages 592-636.
    26. Unsal, Omer & Kabir Hassan, M. & Zirek, Duygu, 2017. "Corporate lobbying and labor relations: Evidence from employee-level litigations," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 411-441.
    27. Navarro, Peter, 1988. "Why Do Corporations Give to Charity?," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(1), pages 65-93, January.
    28. Umit G Gurun & Noah Stoffman & Scott E Yonker, 2018. "Trust Busting: The Effect of Fraud on Investor Behavior," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(4), pages 1341-1376.
    29. Cumming, Douglas & Dai, Na & Johan, Sofia, 2015. "Are hedge funds registered in Delaware different?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 232-246.
    30. Dimmock, Stephen G. & Gerken, William C., 2012. "Predicting fraud by investment managers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 153-173.
    31. Boubakri, Narjess & Guedhami, Omrane & Mishra, Dev & Saffar, Walid, 2012. "Political connections and the cost of equity capital," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 541-559.
    32. Vikas Agarwal & Naveen D. Daniel & Narayan Y. Naik, 2011. "Do Hedge Funds Manage Their Reported Returns?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(10), pages 3281-3320.
    33. Lin, Karen Jingrong & Tan, Jinsong & Zhao, Liming & Karim, Khondkar, 2015. "In the name of charity: Political connections and strategic corporate social responsibility in a transition economy," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 327-346.
    34. Philippe Jorion & Christopher Schwarz, 2019. "The Fix Is In: Properly Backing out Backfill Bias," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(12), pages 5048-5099.
    35. Aggarwal, Rajesh & Boyson, Nicole M., 2016. "The performance of female hedge fund managers," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 23-36.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Weibing Li & Siyuan Chen & Kaixia Zhang, 2023. "Responsible Behavior of Irresponsible Companies: Air Pollution and Charitable Donations of Polluting Companies," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 31(4), pages 90-119, July.
    2. Shiyu Lu & Bo Cheng, 2023. "Roses given, fragrance in hand: Charity law and corporate philanthropy—Evidence from a quasi‐natural experiment in China," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(2), pages 988-1003, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Agarwal, Vikas & Lu, Yan & Ray, Sugata, 2020. "Are hedge funds' charitable donations strategic?," CFR Working Papers 20-14, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    2. Servaes, Henri & Tamayo, Ane, 2017. "The role of social capital in corporations: a review," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 69209, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. L. Bottazzi & M. Da Rin & T. Hellmann, 2007. "The Importance of Trust for Investment: Evidence from Venture Capital," Working Papers 612, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    4. Lesmeister, Simon & Limbach, Peter & Goergen, Marc, 2022. "Trust and monitoring," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    5. Peng Huang & Yue Lu & Robert Faff, 2021. "Social trust and the speed of corporate leverage adjustment: evidence from around the globe," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(2), pages 3261-3303, June.
    6. Li, Xiaorong & Wang, Steven Shuye & Wang, Xue, 2019. "Trust and IPO underpricing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 224-248.
    7. Nurullah Gur, 2015. "Trust and the wealth of nations," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 15(2), pages 107-124, April.
    8. Alan, Sule & Kubilay, Elif, 2023. "Impersonal trust in a Just and Unjust world: Evidence from an educational intervention," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    9. Limbach, Peter & Rau, P. Raghavendra & Schürmann, Henrik, 2020. "The Death of Trust Across the U.S. Finance Industry," CFR Working Papers 20-05, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR), revised 2020.
    10. Dong, Wang & Ke, Yun & Li, Shuo & Chen, Xiangyu & Wan, Peng, 2021. "Does social trust restrain excess perk consumption? Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1078-1092.
    11. Amore, Mario Daniele & Epure, Mircea, 2021. "Riding out of a financial crisis: The joint effect of trust and corporate ownership," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 92-109.
    12. Alessandro, Martin & Cardinale Lagomarsino, Bruno & Scartascini, Carlos & Streb, Jorge & Torrealday, Jerónimo, 2021. "Transparency and Trust in Government. Evidence from a Survey Experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    13. Gupta, Atul & Raman, Kartik & Shang, Chenguang, 2018. "Social capital and the cost of equity," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 102-117.
    14. Pevzner, Mikhail & Xie, Fei & Xin, Xiangang, 2015. "When firms talk, do investors listen? The role of trust in stock market reactions to corporate earnings announcements," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 190-223.
    15. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2010. "Civic Capital as the Missing Link," NBER Working Papers 15845, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Spring, Eva & Grossmann, Volker, 2013. "Does Bilateral Trust Affect International Movement of Goods and Labor?," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79956, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Brandon N. Cline & Claudia R. Williamson, 2020. "Trust, regulation, and contracting institutions," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 26(4), pages 859-895, September.
    18. Ali Recayi Ogcem & Ruth Tacneng & Amine Tarazi, 2021. "Trust and Financial Development: Forms of Trust and Ethnic Fractionalization Matter," Working Papers hal-03322592, HAL.
    19. Shen, Zhe & Sowahfio Sowah, Joseph & Li, Shan, 2022. "Societal trust and corporate risk-taking: International evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    20. Jagannathan, Murali & Jiao, Wei & Karolyi, G. Andrew, 2022. "Is there a home field advantage in global markets?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(2), pages 742-770.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Hedge funds; Philanthropy; Trust; Charitable donations; Capital formation; Corporate social responsibility (CSR);
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets

    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:eee:corfin:v:66:y:2021:i:c:s0929119920302868. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcorpfin .

    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.