IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v232y2023ics0165176523003804.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The cost of hypocrisy: Does corporate ESG decoupling reduce labor investment efficiency?

Author

Listed:
  • Di, Ran
  • Li, Changqing

Abstract

This study finds that ESG decoupling reduces labor investment efficiency mainly by increasing financial constraints and agency costs. ESG decoupling exacerbates both labor overinvestment and labor underinvestment. And environmental uncertainty might exacerbate the negative effect of ESG decoupling on firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Di, Ran & Li, Changqing, 2023. "The cost of hypocrisy: Does corporate ESG decoupling reduce labor investment efficiency?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 232(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:232:y:2023:i:c:s0165176523003804
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111355
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176523003804
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111355?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. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2003. "Enjoying the Quiet Life? Corporate Governance and Managerial Preferences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(5), pages 1043-1075, October.
    2. Andrés Donangelo, 2014. "Labor Mobility: Implications for Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(3), pages 1321-1346, June.
    3. Ben-Nasr, Hamdi & Alshwer, Abdullah A., 2016. "Does stock price informativeness affect labor investment efficiency?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 249-271.
    4. Yupei Liu & Weian Li & Qiankun Meng, 2023. "Influence of distracted mutual fund investors on corporate ESG decoupling: evidence from China," Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 14(1), pages 184-215, January.
    5. Eun-Hee Kim & Thomas P. Lyon, 2015. "Greenwash vs. Brownwash: Exaggeration and Undue Modesty in Corporate Sustainability Disclosure," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(3), pages 705-723, June.
    6. Boochun Jung & Woo†Jong Lee & David P. Weber, 2014. "Financial Reporting Quality and Labor Investment Efficiency," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(4), pages 1047-1076, December.
    7. Yu, Ellen Pei-yi & Luu, Bac Van & Chen, Catherine Huirong, 2020. "Greenwashing in environmental, social and governance disclosures," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    8. Peihua Fan & Mingjun Hou, 2022. "Is there a gap between saying and doing in CSR? Cases from Asian firms," Asia Pacific Business Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 606-615, August.
    9. María D. Odriozola & Elisa Baraibar‐Diez, 2017. "Is Corporate Reputation Associated with Quality of CSR Reporting? Evidence from Spain," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(2), pages 121-132, March.
    10. Cao, Zhangfan & Rees, William, 2020. "Do employee-friendly firms invest more efficiently? Evidence from labor investment efficiency," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    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. Xiangyu Chen & Peng Wan & Zhefeng Ma & Yu Yang, 2024. "Does corporate digital transformation restrain ESG decoupling? Evidence from China," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, December.

    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. Sualihu, Mohammed Aminu & Rankin, Michaela & Haman, Janto, 2021. "The role of equity compensation in reducing inefficient investment in labor," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    2. Fan, Rui & Pan, Jianping & Yu, Minggui & Gao, Hao, 2022. "Corporate governance of controlling shareholders and labor employment decisions: Evidence from a parent board reform in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    3. Bai, Min & Fu, Yumei & Sun, Mingwei, 2023. "Corporate diversification and labor investment efficiency: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    4. Cao, June & Li, Wenwen & Hasan, Iftekhar, 2023. "The impact of lowering carbon emissions on corporate labour investment: A quasi-natural experiment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    5. Li, Bin & Zhao, Qizi & Shahab, Yasir & Kumar, Satish, 2023. "High-speed rail construction and labor investment efficiency: Evidence from an emerging market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    6. Lai, Shaojie & Li, Xiaorong & Liu, Shiang & Wang, Qing Sophie, 2022. "Institutional investors’ site visits and corporate employment decision-making," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3).
    7. Ee, Mong Shan & Hasan, Iftekhar & Huang, He, 2022. "Stock liquidity and corporate labor investment11We are grateful to the editor (Heitor Almeida) and an anynmous reviewer for detailed and significant guidance and suggestions. We thank Huu Duong, Alvin," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    8. Gu, Leilei & Ni, Xiaoran & Tian, Guangning, 2022. "Controlling shareholder expropriation and labor investment efficiency," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 261-274.
    9. Chowdhury, Hasibul & Hossain, Ashrafee & Masum, Abdullah-Al & Zheng, Jiayi, 2023. "Does corporate sexual orientation equality affect labor investment efficiency?," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    10. Khedmati, Mehdi & Sualihu, Mohammed Aminu & Yawson, Alfred, 2020. "CEO-director ties and labor investment efficiency," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Sophie Wang, Qing & Lai, Shaojie & Pi, Shuwen & Anderson, Hamish, 2022. "Does directors' and officers' liability insurance induce empire building? Evidence from corporate labor investment," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    12. Huang, Xinhui & Tarkom, Augustine, 2023. "Labor substitutability and corporate labor investment: Evidence from the H-1B program," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    13. Amanjot Singh, 2023. "Economic growth and labor investment efficiency," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 23(4), pages 886-902, December.
    14. Zhang, Zhuang & Ntim, Collins G. & Zhang, Qingjing & Elmagrhi, Mohamed H., 2020. "Does accounting comparability affect corporate employment decision-making?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(6).
    15. Kerstin Lopatta & Katarina Böttcher & Sumit K. Lodhia & Sebastian A. Tideman, 2020. "Parity codetermination at the board level and labor investment efficiency: evidence on German listed firms," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 90(1), pages 57-108, February.
    16. Do, Trung K. & Le, Anh-Tuan, 2022. "Shareholder litigation rights and labor investment efficiency," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PA).
    17. Ha, Joohyung & Feng, Mingming, 2018. "Conditional conservatism and labor investment efficiency," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 143-163.
    18. Singh, Amanjot, 2022. "Oil Price uncertainty and labor investment efficiency," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    19. Ahrum Choi & Woo‐Jong Lee & Yong Gyu Lee & Gaoguang Zhou, 2023. "Internal Information Quality and Corporate Employment Decisions," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 33(3), pages 262-283, September.
    20. Wang, Maochuan & Yan, Youliang, 2023. "Employee treatment and corporate investment efficiency: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ESG decoupling; Labor investment efficiency; Financial constraint; Agency cost;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    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:ecolet:v:232:y:2023:i:c:s0165176523003804. 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/ecolet .

    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.