Understanding CSR Champions: A Machine Learning Approach
Alona Bilokha, Mingying Cheng, Mengchuan Fu, Iftekhar Hasan
Annals of Operations Research,
forthcoming
Abstract
In this paper, we study champions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance among the U.S. publicly traded firms and their common characteristics by utilizing machine learning algorithms to identify predictors of firms’ CSR activity. We contribute to the CSR and leadership determinants literature by introducing the first comprehensive framework for analyzing the factors associated with corporate engagement with socially responsible behaviors by grouping all relevant predictors into four broad categories: corporate governance, managerial incentives, leadership, and firm characteristics. We find that strong corporate governance characteristics, as manifested in board member heterogeneity and managerial incentives, are the top predictors of CSR performance. Our results suggest policy implications for providing incentives and fostering characteristics conducive to firms “doing good.”
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14.05.2025 • 16/2025
Private ownership boosts hospital performance
New research by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and ESMT Berlin shows that private equity (PE) acquisitions lead to substantial operational efficiency gains in hospitals, challenging common public concerns. The study reveals that hospitals acquired by PE firms significantly reduce costs and administrative staff without increasing closure rates or harming patient care.
Merih Sevilir
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Corporate Social Responsibility and Profit Shifting
Iftekhar Hasan, Panagiotis I. Karavitis, Pantelis Kazakis, Woon Sau Leung
European Accounting Review,
No. 1,
2025
Abstract
This paper examines the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and tax–motivated income shifting. Using a profit–shifting measure estimated from multinational enterprises (MNEs) data, we find that parent firms with higher CSR scores shift significantly more profits to their low-tax foreign subsidiaries. Overall, our evidence suggests that MNEs engaging in CSR activities acquire legitimacy and moral capital that temper negative responses by stakeholders and thus have greater scope and chance to engage in unethical profit-shifting activities, consistent with the legitimacy theory.
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The Bright Side of Bank Lobbying: Evidence from the Corporate Loan Market
Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Thomas Y. To, Eliza Wu
Journal of Corporate Finance,
June
2024
Abstract
Bank lobbying has a bitter taste in most forums, ringing the bell of preferential treatment of big banks from governments and regulators. Using corporate loan facilities and hand-matched information on bank lobbying from 1999 to 2017, we show that lobbying banks increase their borrowers' overall performance. This positive effect is stronger for opaque and credit-constrained borrowers, when the lobbying lender possesses valuable information on the borrower, and for borrowers with strong corporate governance. Our findings are consistent with the theory positing that lobbying can provide access to valuable lender-borrower information, resulting in improved efficiency in large firms' corporate financing.
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Do Politicians Affect Firm Outcomes? Evidence from Connections to the German Federal Parliament
André Diegmann, Laura Pohlan, Andrea Weber
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 15,
2024
Abstract
We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company leadership team and (ii) discontinuities around the marginal seat of party election lists. Our results reveal that connections lead to reductions in firm exits, gradual increases in employment growth without improvements in productivity. Adding information on credit ratings, subsidies and procurement contracts allows us to distinguish between mechanisms driving the effects over the politician’s career.
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The CompNet Competitiveness Database The Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) is a forum for high level research and policy analysis in the areas of competitiveness and…
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Private ownership boosts hospital performance New research shows that private equity (PE) acquisitions lead to substantial operational efficiency gains in hospitals, challenging…
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Seed Fund
Seed Fund Projects SEED 2021/01 I. Deposit Insurance and Depositor Behavior II. Access to Credit and the Environment Head of Project at IWH: Professor Reint Gropp Project Partner:…
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Search Symbols, Trading Performance, and Investor Participation
Yin-Siang Huang, Hui-Ching Chuang, Iftekhar Hasan, Chih-Yung Lin
International Review of Economics and Finance,
April
2024
Abstract
We investigate the relationships among search symbols, trading performance, and investor participation. We use two specific datasets from Google Trends’ search volume index. The search volume by number ticker significantly predicts high returns and high investor participation when applied by active retail investors investing in large firms. This does not hold true for less active retail investors who use Chinese company name tickers as their search terms. Our results indicate that the heuristic usage of number tickers to search for company information helps active retail investors to obtain better trading performance compared with less active retail investors who use Chinese company name tickers.
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