Recent literature suggests that some socially responsible corporate actions benefit shareholders while others do not. We study differences in policy toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) between family and non-family firms, using environmental performance as the proxy for CSR. We show that family firms are more responsible to shareholders than non-family firms in making environmental investments. When shareholder interests and societal interests coincide, i.e., when it comes to alleviating environmental concerns that have potential to harm society and elevate the firm's risk exposure, family firms do at least as well as non-family firms in protecting shareholder interests. However, when shareholder and societal interests diverge, i.e., when it comes to making environmental investments that might benefit society but do not benefit shareholders, family firms protect shareholder interests by undertaking a significantly lower level of such investments than non-family firms. Our findings suggest that lack of diversification by controlling families creates strong incentives for them to act in the financial interest of all shareholders, which more than overcomes any noneconomic benefits families may derive from engaging in social causes that do not benefit non-controlling shareholders.

We provide new evidence on the determinants of corporate derivatives use by studying how markets respond to announcements of changes in derivatives positions by gold-mining firms. Announcements of increases or decreases in derivatives positions are associated with, respectively, negative or positive reactions in equity prices for both the announcing firm and other gold-mining firms, and, respectively, negative or positive reactions in the gold market. The reactions in the gold market and stock market (both firm and industry) are significantly more positive or negative, respectively, when firms explicitly state that they are decreasing or increasing derivatives positions due to changes in their market views of future gold prices. We help bridge an important gap in the literature by providing evidence consistent with some firms possessing credible private information that underlies changes in their derivatives positions, despite the absence of documented shareholder benefits created by firms that engage in selective hedging. Our findings also provide support for distress-cost minimization as a rationale for corporate derivatives use.