Discussion of “Equity Financing and Social Responsibility: Further International Evidence”

Even though corporate social responsibility (CSR) has grown substantially in recent years, there has been limited empirical research on the relation between CSR and the perceptions of capital market participants. One stream of the literature focuses on the relation between CSR and firm cost of capital. The Wang et al. (forthcoming) study advances our understanding of the CSR–financial performance relationship by investigating whether CSR performance significantly reduces the cost of equity capital internationally. Future research on CSR should a) provide more in-depth economic intuition and address methodological issues related to differences in cross-country analyses, and b) investigate further and in greater detail the circumstances in which investments in CSR are not beneficial to the firms.