This study treats firm productivity as an accumulation of productive intangibles and posits that stakeholder engagement associated with better corporate social performance helps develop such intangibles. We hypothesize that because shareholders factor improved productive efficiency into stock price, productivity mediates the relationship between corporate social and financial performance. Furthermore, we argue that key stakeholders' social considerations are more valuable for firms with higher levels of discretionary cash and income stream uncertainty. Therefore, we hypothesize that those two contingencies moderate the mediated process of corporate social performance with financial performance. Our analysis, based on a comprehensive longitudinal dataset of U.S. manufacturing firms from 1992 to 2009, lends strong support for these hypotheses. In short, this paper uncovers a productivity-based, contextdependent mechanism underlying the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance.

No abstract

No abstract

Using a sample of 161 global banks in 23 countries, we examine the applicability of structural models and bank fundamentals to price global bank credit risk. First, we find that variables predicted by structural models (leverage, volatility, and risk-free rate) are significantly associated with bank CDS spreads. Second, some CAMELS indicators, including asset quality, cost efficiency, and sensitivity to market risk, contain incremental information for bank CDS prices. Moreover, leverage and asset quality have had a stronger impact on bank CDS since the onset of the recent financial crisis. Banks in countries with lower stock market volatility and/or more financial conglomerates restrictions tend to have lower CDS spreads. Deposit insurance appears to have an adverse effect on CDS spreads, indicating a moral hazard problem.