Are more corporate social investments better? Evidence of non-linearity effect on costs of U.S. Bank loans

Abstract

We explore a research issue of whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities have a monotonic relationship with the cost of bank debt. Employing extensive data of private syndicated loans issued by U.S. firms, we find that the benefit of CSR strengths is not monotonic but declines at a decreasing rate, relative to the loan spread of private bank loans. Our findings indicate that there is an optimal level of CSR engagement with respect to the cost of debt. Undocumented for U.S. firms in the CSR literature, our results offer new evidence on the non-linearity effect of CSR on debt financing costs and suggest that a borrower's CSR investments beyond an optimal level are viewed as ineffective and wasteful.