CSR engagement and market structure: Evidence from listed banks

Abstract

According to the established literature, banks undertake social investment to compensate for the benefits enjoyed by the society. At first glance, one could expect more involvement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) from banks that have greater monopolistic power. However, this perspective would differentiate between banks and non-financial firms, since the latter use CSR engagement as a competitive lever. Thus, it follows that greater market pressure boosts a firm’s CSR investments. This conundrum has triggered the present analysis which, after estimating a Lerner index and then running a system-GMM regression, verified the impact of a firm’s monopolistic competition based on three scores pertaining to the listed banks’ CSR commitment. Our results support the view that the level of social responsibility of the banks’ management is affected by their markup on price.