Research

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND FORCED MIGRATION:

A SIGNALING APPROACH

(with Marieke Huysentruyt, winner of the 2022 Carolyn Dexter All-Academy Award)

Question: Does community-level exposure to forced migration affect European firms' CSR portfolio choices?

Theory: Signaling framework wherein high-social-responsibility companies can use low-materiality CSR policies to signal their type to community stakeholders who care about social issues.

Hypothesis: On average, exposure to forced migration is positively (negatively) associated with the adoption of low-(high-) materiality CSR policies.

Empirical Approach: Event studies using communities' proximity to tragic refugee incidents as a source of variation in the exposure to forced migration.

Main Result: On average, firms headquartered in communities where a tragic refugee incident occurs progressively substitute low-materiality CSR policies for high-materiality actions.