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Rhetoric, Reality, and Reputation: Do CSR and Political Lobbying Protect Shareholder Wealth against Environmental Lawsuits?

Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 2020 55(2), 679-706
We investigate whether firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) reputations and environmental lobbying efforts protect shareholder wealth in the event of environmental lawsuits. Using a sample of lawsuits filed in United States Federal Courts, we find that firms with superior CSR reputations suffer worse market reactions to environmental allegations. In contrast, lobbying cushions filing-date valuation losses, providing insurance-like protection against lawsuits. Our results are robust to subsample analyses, a falsification test, propensity score matching, and alternative empirical proxies and model specifications.