Essays in financial economics

This dissertation studies various facets of corporate governance across three chapters. Chapter 1 examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), shareholder value, and competition by applying a regression discontinuity design to the outcome of CSR shareholder proposals. The approval of CSR proposals generates positive abnormal returns on the vote date, increases CSR scores, increases market shares, and increases the CSR scores of industry peers. The impact on abnormal returns is higher among firms who possess low CSR scores, firms who operate in more competitive industries, and firms subject to higher customer awareness. Altogether, these results suggest that CSR improves shareholder value by enhancing the competitiveness of firms. Chapter 2 studies the underlying characteristics of shareholder activism and the stock market reaction to the announcement of activist campaigns.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Martins, Fernando Miguel Pinto.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David Thesmar.

• Sloan School of Management.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129094

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/129094