IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v87y2026ics1544612325021828.html

Does the market value CEO climate activism? Evidence from the we mean business letter

Author

Listed:
  • Wingender, John
  • Lucey, Brian

Abstract

CEO corporate activism is relatively new. Alignment theory predicts that a CEO’s public stance could improve firm value via a positive impact on shareholders, employees and/or customers. The signing of the Open Letter to President Biden by 408 US CEOs and investors, organized by the We Mean Business Coalition, encouraged US President Biden's commitment to climate change. The publication of this letter on April 13, 2021, provides an experiment to test the impact of Top Tier Management CEO sociopolitical activism on firm value. The event study results find robust, significant positive short-term and long-term impacts on firm value.

Suggested Citation

  • Wingender, John & Lucey, Brian, 2026. "Does the market value CEO climate activism? Evidence from the we mean business letter," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:87:y:2026:i:c:s1544612325021828
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2025.108929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612325021828
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2025.108929?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

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • 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:finlet:v:87:y:2026:i:c:s1544612325021828. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    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.