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The Accounting Review Vol. 98 No. 4 2023

Do Depositors Respond to Banks’ Social Performance?

Yi-Chun Chen1; Mingyi Hung2; Lynn Linghuan Wang3

1 City University of Hong Kong · 2 The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · 3 The University of Hong Kong

Abstract

We study whether and how banks’ social performance affects depositors, who hold demandable debt with pervasive government protection. Exploiting the regulatory releases of bank performance ratings for community development and a difference-in-differences design, we find a decline in deposit growth after the release of negative bank social performance. In addition, deposits that are impacted by the negative events flow to nearby banks with high social performance. Further analyses find that the results hold similarly among insured and uninsured deposits and are primarily driven by banks with a large proportion of deposits from high-trust and pro-social counties, and in poor information environments. Overall, we contribute to the literature by documenting the importance of social performance to nonshareholder stakeholders and providing implications for bank stability.

DOI
10.2308/tar-2019-0653
Volume
98
Issue
4
Pages
89-114
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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