CSR and firm profitability: Evidence from a meta‐regression analysis
通过元回归分析512项实证研究的7800个结果，发现企业社会责任与财务绩效存在微弱正相关，且存在出版偏倚；研究设计特征如指标选择、行业和地区会影响效应大小。
Abstract We analyze the literature on the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP) by applying meta‐regression analysis (MRA) to 7800 results of 512 empirical studies. Our findings reveal a small positive link between CSP and CFP as well as the presence of publication bias that favors statistically significant CSP–CFP regression coefficients. We also evaluate the impact of the underlying research design on the heterogeneity in published effects using Bayesian and frequentist model‐averaging (FMA). We consider 42 contextual characteristics and our results show that reported CSP–CFP effects are smaller in cases where a binary index is used to measure CSP or when CSP is used as the dependent variable. In contrast, firms in industrial sectors or operating in China rather than the United States exhibit stronger effects. Finally, the CSP–CFP effect is driven by the choice of the econometric estimator and the inclusion of firm size as control variable.