A theory of firm opacity and corporate social responsibility

We investigate theoretically the effect of firm opacity, the degree of information asymmetry between firms and outside investors, on whether Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities signal firm value. In our model, a profit-maximizing firm chooses whether to conduct costly CSR activities observable to potential investors and whether to undertake internal corporate and managerial actions that improve its value, which is unobservable to potential investors. We show that the firm is more likely to perform CSR when it undertakes the value-enhancing internal actions in equilibrium, and hence, CSR signals the firm’s value and increases investors’ expected valuation of the shares, only when the firm is moderately opaque. Empirical implications regarding the effect of firm opacity on the correlation between CSR and firm value are discussed.

我们从理论上研究了企业不透明度（企业与外部投资者之间的信息不对称程度）对企业社会责任（CSR）活动是否能传递企业价值的影响。在我们的模型中，一个追求利润最大化的企业要决定是否开展潜在投资者可观察到的成本高昂的企业社会责任活动，以及是否采取能提升其价值但潜在投资者无法观察到的内部公司和管理行动。我们表明，当企业在均衡状态下采取提升价值的内部行动时，它更有可能开展企业社会责任活动，因此，只有当企业具有适度的不透明度时，企业社会责任才会传递企业的价值并提高投资者对股票的预期估值。文中还讨论了关于企业不透明度对企业社会责任与企业价值之间相关性影响的实证意义。