Corporate Actions as Moral Issues

By: Zwetelina Iliewa, Elisabeth Kempf and Oliver Spalt

Format:Print
| Language:English
| Pages:84

Abstract

We examine nonpecuniary preferences across a broad set of corporate actions using a representative sample of the U.S. population. Our core findings, based on large-scale online surveys, are that (i) self-reported nonpecuniary concerns are large both for stock market investors and non-investors; (ii) concerns about the treatment of workers and CEO pay rank highest—higher than concerns about workforce diversity and fossil energy usage; (iii) moral universalism emerges as an important driver of nonpecuniary preferences. Combined, our findings provide new evidence on the importance of moral concerns as a key determinant of nonpecuniary preferences over corporate actions.