Does Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Improve Credit Ratings? Evidence from Geographic Identification
研究发现，同一邮编区域的企业CSR政策相互影响，且CSR水平越高的企业信用评级越好，CSR每提高一个标准差，信用评级提升4.5%。
We show that a firm's CSR policy is significantly influenced by the CSR policies of firms in the same three‐digit zip code, an effect possibly due to investor clienteles, local competition, and/or social interactions. We then exploit the variation in CSR across the zip codes to estimate the effect of CSR on credit ratings under the assumption that zip code assignments are exogenous. We find that more socially responsible firms enjoy more favorable credit ratings. In particular, an increase in CSR by one standard deviation improves the firm's credit rating by as much as 4.5%.