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Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The contribution juxtaposes the traditional neutralistic view on the role of accounting in a society as an activity of independent and unbiased measurement and presentation of real economic phenomena with the extended view on accounting as a socio-political practice and ideology. It also shows how the latter view impacts the understanding of the role of accounting and its reactions in light of the recent global financial crisis.

The purpose of this article is to provide a comparison of the impact on audit pricing of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 to that of the 2008 financial collapse and the resulting Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. While prior studies have documented increased audit costs due to SOX, they have not found such increases related to the other two events. We extend this research into the subsequent two events by focusing on audit pricing in the banking industry since that industry was most directly impacted by the financial crisis and Dodd–Frank. In contrast to the prior literature based on industrial firms, we find banks experienced significant increases in audit fees related to Dodd–Frank that were unexplained by traditional control variables. Finally, we find mixed evidence of economies of scale in dealing with the costs of implementing the legislation. While only smaller banks had a significant increase in audit fees as a percentage of total assets for Dodd–Frank, larger banks experienced significantly higher audit costs due to SOX. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of social justice underlie the clamour for greater gender balance in top-management. The present study reveals that pursuit of such social justice is also value-enhancing in relation to the longer-run performance of initial public offerings (IPO) stocks, especially where female board members are unencumbered by family-connection with other directors. This study examines the economic benefits of board gender diversity for state- and privately controlled firms in the Hong Kong IPO market. Gender board diversity is much less common in state-run IPO firms. Within the subset of privately controlled IPO firms, distinction exists between entities that accommodate family-connected board officers and those that do not. Specifically, this study focuses on family-ties between board members. This issue allows for finer-grained assessment of family influence on firm performance. Stronger post-listing stock, return-on-assets and sales-on-assets performance arise in (1) privately controlled firms without family-connected board members and in (2) state-run entities. Gender diversity thus serves as a positive, but only when female director presence is untrammelled by family associations between directors. However, there is little evidence of a link between female board representation and IPO underpricing. Relative to state-backed issuers, privately controlled firm boards accommodate more women, younger officers and a broader mix of nationalities, but appear more-inclined to unify CEO and chair positions. Board duality, the fraction of independent directors and directors’ age and nationality exhibit little relation with initial and aftermarket stock returns. In prescriptive terms, minority investors gain from the inclusion of female directors, especially when IPO firm directors are unencumbered by family-affiliation with other board members. Results therefore add to the clarion of calls for greater female board presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Researchers frequently proxy for managers’ non‐GAAP disclosures using performance metrics available through analyst forecast data providers (FDPs), such as I/B/E/S. The extent to which FDP‐provided earnings are a valid proxy for managers’ non‐GAAP reporting, however, has been debated extensively. We explore this important question by creating the first large‐sample data set of managers’ non‐GAAP earnings disclosures, which we directly compare to I/B/E/S data. Although we find a substantial overlap between the two data sets, we also find that they differ in systematic ways because I/B/E/S (1) excludes managers’ lower quality non‐GAAP numbers and (2) sometimes provides higher quality non‐GAAP measures that managers do not explicitly disclose. Our results indicate that using I/B/E/S to identify managers’ non‐GAAP disclosures significantly underestimates the aggressiveness of their reporting choices. We encourage researchers interested in managers’ non‐GAAP reporting to use our newly available data set of manager‐disclosed non‐GAAP metrics because it more accurately captures managers’ reporting choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This study examines the incremental information in loss firms’ non‐GAAP earnings disclosures relative to GAAP earnings. Using a large sample obtained through textual analysis and hand‐collection, we posit and find that loss firms’ non‐GAAP earnings exclusions offset the low informativeness of GAAP losses for forecasting and valuation. Loss firms’ non‐GAAP earnings are highly predictive of future performance and are valued by investors, while the expenses excluded from GAAP earnings are not. Additional tests suggest that loss firms disclosing non‐GAAP profits have significantly better future performance than GAAP‐only loss firms and are not overvalued by investors. Comparing non‐GAAP earnings of profitable firms to those of loss firms, we find that loss firms’ non‐GAAP metrics are significantly more predictive and less strategic. We conclude that non‐GAAP earnings disclosures are particularly informative about loss firms and help investors disaggregate losses into components that have differential implications for forecasting and valuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loss firms are an economically significant and growing segment of the population of publicly traded corporations. Relatively little is known about the tax positions of loss firms because the firms are typically dropped from tax avoidance studies. We develop a new measure of corporate cash tax avoidance that is meaningful for all observations and reflects the extent to which a firm is tax-favored. We examine the extent to which inferences about corporate tax avoidance over the past twenty-seven years change when we examine the full population of firms, as opposed to a profitable and/or taxable subsample. In contrast to prior research findings, our results suggest that on average firms are tax-disfavored, by which we mean cash taxes paid exceed the product of the firm’s pre-tax book income and the statutory tax rate. In addition, many industries that appear to be tax-favored in profitable subsamples are tax-disfavored when the entire population is examined. We also find that the extent to which firms are tax-disfavored is increasing over time, and that domestic firms are more tax-disfavored than multinationals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of business group ownership structure on the quality of earnings reporting using data from South Korea. In addition, we investigate the impact of ownership disparity and family ownership on earnings quality reporting. Using a self-constructed earnings quality index as a measure of earnings quality, we found that business group ownership structure is significantly associated with higher earnings quality. The result suggests that strong monitoring mechanisms introduced by the government, which are necessary for credibility in external financial markets and beneficial to business group reputation, led to increased transparency in earnings reports. We also found that disparity in ownership between control and cash flow rights in firms, as well as family ownership in group firms, was both associated with lower earnings quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the United States Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) unilateral release of information on non-tax payments by extractive companies to the US Government as an illustration of the economic value of EITI information. We test for market reaction to the initial disclosure of this information in terms of change in trading volume and abnormal returns, and the value relevance of the continuing disclosure of the information over 2013–2016 period. The results show that the initial release resulted in a significant trading volume reaction and produced positive cumulative abnormal return in the period immediately surrounding the release date. Regression analyses of the cross-sectional variation in abnormal returns show that the reaction is associated with oil and gas firms with high working capital and lower asset turnover. Furthermore, we find that the USEITI information released over the period to 2016 is (at least) weakly value relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of derivatives use on corporate capital expenditures by utilizing reporting changes under the disclosure requirements of the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 133 (SFAS 133). The standard requires firms to recognize and report the use of derivatives in their financial statements, including its purpose and its hedging effectiveness. This greater transparency is expected to incentivize firms toward demonstrating greater effectiveness in their derivatives use for hedging purposes. The literature on the real consequences of derivatives use is limited, probably due to the difficulty of ascertaining its hedging effectiveness in addition to its purpose, which is made possible under SFAS 133. Since effective hedging reduces risk exposure, lowers the costs of financial distress, and mitigates underinvestment, it can have a real effect in the form of raising the level of capital investment. The research in this paper distinguishes itself from earlier studies in linking derivatives use to hedging and hedging effectiveness in its study of the impact of derivatives use on capital investment. I find evidence supporting a positive effect of derivatives use on capital investment. Additionally, a lower risk exposure that can be linked to hedging effectiveness, as it is under SFAS 133, is shown to have a positive impact on capital investment. From a policy standpoint, the results suggest that required disclosures may have a real impact if they provide affected firms with an incentive to change their behavior while meeting the disclosure requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Die Unternehmen der digitalen Wirtschaft werden verdächtigt, zu wenig Steuern zu zahlen. Auf Dauer muss beides nicht so bleiben. Schließlich haben kleine Länder einen starken Anreiz, den Import digitaler Unternehmensleistungen – anders als den Import von Kapital – unilateral zu besteuern. Daher besteht vielmehr die Gefahr, dass es ohne internationale Vereinbarungen längerfristig zu einer Doppelbesteuerung von digitalen F&E-Aktivitäten kommt. Dagegen spricht allenfalls die begründete Erwartung, dass die Exportländer im eigenen Interesse einer internationalen Steuerrechtsordnung zustimmen, die die Teilung des Gewinns aus digitalen Unternehmensleistungen zur Regel macht. Eine solche Gewinnteilung lässt sich auch mit einer normativen Analyse zwischenstaatlicher Steuergerechtigkeit rechtfertigen. Derartige theoretische Erkenntnisse ermöglichen es, die jüngsten Vorschläge der Europäischen Kommission zur fairen Besteuerung der digitalen Wirtschaft einzuordnen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that the revised loan loss provisioning based on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) implies a reduction of Tier 1 capital. The paper finds in a counterfactual analysis that these changes are more severe (i) during economic downturns, (ii) for credit portfolios of low quality, (iii) for banks that do not tighten capital standards during downturns, and (iv) under a more comprehensive definition of significant increase in credit risk (SICR) under IFRS. The provisioning rules further increase the procyclicality of bank capital requirements. Adjustments of the SICR threshold or capital buffers are suggested as ways to mitigate a regulatory pressure that may emerges due to the reduction of regulatory capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial reporting fraud and other forms of financial reporting misconduct are a significant threat to the existence and efficiency of capital markets. This study reviews the literature on financial reporting misconduct from the perspectives of law, accounting, and finance. Our goals are to establish a common language for researchers interested in this line of research, describe the main findings and challenges in these literatures, and provide directions for future research. Although research on financial reporting misconduct faces challenges, those challenges provide significant opportunities to advance the literature, as the answers to many questions on financial reporting misconduct remain unsettled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We explore how various aspects of corporate governance influence the likelihood of a public corporation surviving as a separate public entity, after addressing potential endogeneity that arises from competing corporate exit outcomes: acquisitions, going‐private transactions, and bankruptcies. We find that some corporate governance features are more important determinants of the form of a firm's exit than many economic factors that have figured prominently in prior research. We also find evidence that outsider‐dominated boards and lower restrictions on internal governance play major roles in the way firms exit public markets, particularly when a firm's industry suffers a negative shock. Overall, our results suggest that failure to recognize competing risks produces biased estimates, resulting in faulty inferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: In collaboration with the Authority for the Financial Markets in the Netherlands, we manipulate the content of official letters that instruct financial intermediaries to submit a mandatory self‐assessment. As part of the Registered Report Process, we submitted our hypotheses, experimental procedure, and planned statistical analyses before data collection. We predicted that a request indicating a supportive regulatory attitude has a positive effect on reporting quality on average. We also predicted this effect to be stronger for small firms and for firms with a long‐term orientation, and to become negative for firms with a short‐term orientation. Planned analyses show that a supportive letter reduced reporting quality unless firms had a long‐term orientation, supporting the moderating influence of time horizon, but providing no support for the expected average effect or for moderation by firm size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Are regulatory interventions delayed reactions to market failures or can regulators proactively pre‐empt corporate misbehavior? From a public interest view, we would expect “effective” regulation to ex ante mitigate agency conflicts between corporate insiders and outsiders, and prevent corporate misbehavior from occurring or quickly rectify transgressions. However, regulators are also self‐interested and may be captured, uninformed, or ideological, and become less effective as a result. In this registered report, we develop a historical time series of corporate (accounting) scandals and (accounting) regulations for a panel of 26 countries from 1800 to 2015. An analysis of the lead‐lag relations at both the global and individual country level yields the following insights: (1) Corporate scandals are an antecedent to regulation over long stretches of time, suggesting that regulators are typically less flexible and informed than firms. (2) Regulation is positively related to the incidence of future scandals, suggesting that regulators are not fully effective, that explicit rules are required to identify scandalous corporate actions, or that new regulations have unintended consequences. (3) There exist systematic differences in these lead‐lag relations across countries and over time, suggesting that the effectiveness of regulation is shaped by fundamental country characteristics like market development and legal tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that services which are complimentary and closer aligned to the annual report audit provide greater insight about risk and are more likely to exhibit the existence of economies of scope (knowledge spillover) through a positive association with audit fees. Specifically, we consider the potential for knowledge spillover from the auditing of triennial Long-Term Plans (LTP) to the annual report audit for a large sample of New Zealand municipals over the period 2005–2013. We find the LTP audit fees are positively related to municipal annual report audit fees and other fees (audit of for-profit subsidiaries, non-audit services) are not. This suggests that knowledge spillovers are dependent on the nature of the additional services. We also find evidence of higher fees for private sector auditors for both the annual report and the LTP audit. The LTP (forecast) audit fee is associated with municipal size, complexity, and political competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between accounting conservatism and the cost of equity capital (COEC). For this purpose, we use the quantile regression (QR) framework and examine the effect of two dimensions of conservatism (ex ante and ex post) on the COEC. This methodological contribution allows us to test whether the effect of the two forms of conservatism vary across the full distribution, especially at the extreme quantiles of the COEC. Empirical results from the QR reveal that the effect of the two dimensions of conservatism considerably differs across COEC quantiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Whistleblowers are ostensibly a valuable resource to regulators investigating securities violations, but whether there is a link between whistleblower involvement and the outcomes of enforcement actions is unclear. Using a data set of employee whistleblowing allegations obtained from the U.S. government and the universe of enforcement actions for financial misrepresentation, we find that whistleblower involvement is associated with higher monetary penalties for targeted firms and employees and with longer prison sentences for culpable executives. We also find that regulators more quickly begin enforcement proceedings when whistleblowers are involved. Our findings suggest that whistleblowers are a valuable source of information for regulators who investigate and prosecute financial misrepresentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: I exploit variation in the adoption of disclosure and supervisory regulation across U.S. states to examine their impact on the development and stability of commercial banks. The empirical results suggest that the adoption of state‐level requirements to report financial statements in local newspapers is associated with greater stability and development of commercial banks. I also examine which political constituencies influence the adoption of disclosure and supervisory regulation. I find that powerful landowners and small private banks are associated with late adoption of these regulations. These findings suggest that incumbent groups oppose disclosure rules because the passage of such rules threatens their private interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the adoption of SFAS 142 as an exogenous shock, we examine the effect of changes in financial reporting on firms’ internal information environment. We argue that complying with SFAS 142 induces managers to acquire new information and therefore improves their information sets. Interviews with executives and auditors confirm this argument. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that firms affected by SFAS 142 (i.e., treatment firms) experience an improvement in management forecast accuracy in the post-SFAS 142 period. The increase is smaller for those with stronger monitoring in the pre-SFAS 142 period and greater for those with a higher likelihood of goodwill impairment. Furthermore, treatment firms with improvements in management forecast accuracy have higher M&A quality, internal capital allocation efficiency, and performance in the post-SFAS142 period. Overall, our findings indicate that changes in external financial reporting can lead to better corporate decisions via their impact on the internal information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies find that firms cut research and development (R&D) expense in response to earnings considerations. We extend this stream of research by documenting that firms narrowly achieving an earnings threshold also report unusually high capital expenditures. In addition, these firms’ total investments (R&D expense plus capital expenditures) do not vary in response to earnings thresholds, which suggests that, on average, reductions in R&D expense are offset by concurrent increases in capital expenditures. Lastly, our research design allows us to infer that the increased capital expenditures are largely R&D investments that are capitalized instead of non-R&D capital expenditures, suggesting that overall investments in R&D are relatively unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a large sample of European firms, we examine whether variant compliance levels with mandated disclosures under IAS 36Impairment of Assetsand IAS 38Intangible Assetsare value relevant and affect analysts’ forecasts. Our results indicate a mean (median) compliance level of about 84% (86%) but high variation among firms and disclosure levels regarding IAS 36 being much lower than those regarding IAS 38. In depth, analysis reveals that non-compliance relates mostly to proprietary information and information that reveals managers’ judgment and expectations. Furthermore, we find a positive (negative) relationship between average disclosure levels and market values (analysts’ forecast dispersion). Results, however, hold more specifically for disclosures related to IAS 36, and these also improve analysts’ forecast accuracy. Our findings add knowledge regarding the economic consequences of mandatory disclosures, have an appeal to regulators and financial statement preparers and reflect on the IASB’s concerns to increase the guidance and principles on presentation and disclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the extent to which capital thresholds induce insurers to strategically exert accounting discretion to forestall regulatory actions. Using a sample of US property-liability insurers during 1994-2009, we find that when managing their claim loss reserves, the average insurers are insensitive to the pressure of capital regulation as measured by the distance of their RBC ratio to the action threshold. Yet, when the insurers are virtually partitioned by their reserving tendency, the effect of regulatory pressure is significantly related to the downward reserve bias in the under-reserving insurer cohorts. This finding continues to hold even after we utilize the number of ratio violations in the insurance regulatory information systems to purge the financial weakness effect embedded in the distance to RBC bound ratio. Hence, our empirical evidence suggests that insurers that are about to trigger the regulatory threshold will have the incentives to understate their loss reserves to preclude the impending authorized preventive actions. Finally, our analyses also shed light on the heterogeneity of incentives to managing loss reserves among over- and under-reserving insurers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement actions on individuals holding Certified Public Accountant (CPA) accreditation. While prior research has investigated both the characteristics of companies that have been investigated by the SEC and litigation against audit firms, it has not addressed the ways in which SEC investigations impact CPAs. Using a sample of 262 CPAs, we find that the most common CPA breach was associated with overstating revenues/income or earnings. The study finds serious consequences for CPAs in terms of employment restrictions and SEC actions, incorporating suspension, which is often permanent. We find that the primary factors relating to the severity of actions by the SEC is whether the CPA intentionally breached the professional code of conduct, the age of the CPA, whether the CPA is still a member of the AICPA with CPA status and whether the CPA was operating as an external auditor or in a corporate accounting role. Our findings have implications for accounting practitioners, the AICPA and boards of directors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between corporate governance and firm performance, with an emphasis given to the question of whether capital market-oriented funding policies are more efficient when compared to their bank-related counterparts, has not been explicitly investigated despite its high importance for the legitimation of the regulatory policy in the EU and its member states. The paper at hand wants to fill this gap by empirically analyzing this question utilizing two panels of publicly traded German corporations. By using a ratio measuring the scope of capital market-based funding as well as further hand-collected corporate governance variables incorporating different groups of stakeholders, we investigate the determinants of firm performance expressed by accounting-based and/or market-based indicators. The results show that capital market-based funding has an ambiguous and time-varying impact on firm performance, while ‘strategic attributes’ and ‘governance attributes’ play very important roles as in particular organizational features might complement performance effects by providing safeguards in times of crisis. Taken together, our empirical findings imply that the ‘capital market-oriented firm’ is not an appropriate point of reference to capture the de facto behavior of large German corporations. Given this, regulatory bodies might be well-advised to develop alternative ‘role models’ for future corporate governance-related regulatory activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how the change to 50% labor representation on German supervisory boards is related to working capital and operating cash flows, since both are proxies for short-term financial policies. We expect the change to be associated with reduced working capital and increased operating cash flows. Using a difference-in-differences model, we compare a sample of listed and non-listed firms that changed to parity codetermination between 1987 and 2014 with two different groups of control firms that did not change their level of codetermination. In line with our hypotheses, the results suggest that a change to parity codetermination is related to lower working capital and higher operating cash flows compared to our control firms. We conclude that firms begin to engage in more efficient working capital management due to the change to parity codetermination on supervisory boards. We also conclude that the positive short-term effects on the firms' operating performance imply that labor representatives do not bear just the interests of employees in mind, but also those of other stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether corporate pension plans of client firms (hereafter, clients) influence auditors’ decisions on audit pricing for the clients in the U.S. We find that, on average, auditors charge higher fees for auditing financial statements of client firms sponsoring defined benefits (DB) pension plans than matched firms without DB pension plans. Moreover, we find that the effect of DB pension plans on audit fees is stronger when clients’ earnings are more sensitive to DB pension estimates, or when managers’ compensation induces more risk taking. Finally, we find that the additional audit fees charged for clients with DB pension plans are negatively associated with the extent of manipulations of DB pension accounting estimates. Collectively, our findings suggest that auditors consider managers’ incentive to manipulate earnings and increase audit effort to reduce audit risk associated with DB pension accounting, which results in higher audit fees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the association between financial inclusion disclosure and firm performance in Bangladeshi banks from 2009 to 2014 in response to a regulatory directive on the engagement of banking firms in financial inclusion activities. We find a positive association between financial inclusion disclosure and banking firms’ subsequent performance, with this relationship moderated by market competition and government ownership. We also find evidence that firms’ engagement in financial inclusion activities increases their market share, with the disclosure of this information reducing the information asymmetry between managers and capital market participants. The broad implication of our research findings is that firms considering investing in financial inclusion activities could benefit from improved firm performance and gain market share. The research findings contribute to the larger debate on the reasons why firms should consider incorporating these initiatives into their operational activities. In addition, the findings inform various international organisations that promote financial inclusion activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We experimentally study the deception detection capabilities of experienced auditors, using CEO narratives from earnings conference calls as case materials. We randomly assign narratives of fraud and nonfraud companies to auditors as well as the presence versus absence of an instruction explaining that cognitive dissonance in speech is helpful for detecting deception. We predict this instruction will weaken auditors' learned tendency to overlook fraud cues. We find that auditors' deception judgments are less accurate for fraud companies than for nonfraud companies, unless they receive this instruction. We also find that instructed auditors more extensively describe red flags for fraud companies and more accurately identify specific sentences in narratives that pertain to underlying frauds. These findings indicate that instructing experienced auditors to be alert for cognitive dissonance in CEO narratives can activate deception detection capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use historical particularities of pension funding law to investigate whether managers of U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plan sponsors strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension plans were required to estimate two liabilities--one with mandated discount rates and mortality assumptions, and another where these could be chosen freely. Using a sample of 11,963 plans, we find that the regulated liability exceeds the unregulated measure by 10% and the difference further increases for underfunded pension plans. Underfunded plans tend to assume substantially higher discount rates and lower life expectancy. The effect persists both in the cross-section of plans and over time and it serves to reduce cash contributions. We further show that plan sponsor managers use the freed-up cash for corporate investment and that credit risk is unlikely to explain the finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, a new law required Indian firms, which satisfy certain profitability, net worth, and size thresholds, to spend at least 2% of their net income on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We exploit this regulatory change to isolate the shareholder value implications of CSR activities. Using an event study approach coupled with a regression discontinuity design, we find that the law, on average, caused a 4.1% drop in the stock price of firms forced to spend money on CSR. However, firms that spend more on advertising are not negatively affected by the mandatory CSR rule. These results suggest that firms voluntarily choose CSR to maximize shareholder value. Therefore, forcing a firm to spend on CSR is likely to be sub-optimal for the firm with a consequent negative impact on shareholder value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]