Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Credit Risk

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices of firms on the pricing of firm credit risk. We use Credit Default Swaps (CDS) as a measurement of credit risk. Our evidence suggests that higher CSR scores mitigate credit risks of a sample of U.S. non-financial firms from 2010 to 2017. The results reveal that firms listed in The Sustainability yearbooks provided by RobecoSAM research company register lower CDS spread values. Furthermore, we perform a robustness test that leads to similar results supporting the baseline results