Does social performance influence breadth of ownership?
研究了企业社会绩效如何影响股权持有广度，发现高CSR评级吸引更多机构和个人投资者，并提升股票流动性、降低资本成本。
Abstract This study examines the hitherto unexplored question of whether and how a firm's social performance influences the breadth of that firm's share ownership. We predict and find that firms with higher corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings attract more institutional investors (especially long‐term, low‐stake and green institutional investors) and more individual investors. This finding is consistent with the notion that investors are more interested in firms with higher CSR ratings and thus prefer to hold stocks of such firms. We also find that firms with higher CSR ratings are associated with higher stock liquidity, lower cost of equity capital, more equity and debt issuance, and greater investment, and that sin stocks are associated with a lower investor base, which further corroborates our prediction. Our results are robust to potential endogeneity, the use of alternative model specifications, and an alternative proxy for CSR performance.