Social Econ Blog

Description/Hypothesis

A primary economic assumption is that firms seek to maximize profits. Why then do firms give to charity? While some firms include community contribution as part of their utility function, a large number of firms use giving to charity as a method to boost their Public Relations. In many industries consumer sentiment towards a company can have a large affect on company profits. For example when Nike faced allegations of human rights violations, boycotts from numerous groups hurt world wide sales of their product. Since PR is so important to the success of a company, I will be studying the affects of negative shocks (defined as negative media coverage of a company) on the percentage of revenues a company donates to charitable causes. I will also be analyzing how the transparency and prominence of these contributions is affected following a negative shock.

My hypothesis is that companies facing a random negative shock will seek to preserve their image through the most effective means plausible which I believe is through public charitable contributions. Companies will also shift existing charitable contributions towards projects that will rebuild “social capital” with their consumer base.

Data:

Data will come from self reported company charitable contributions. Negative shocks will be judged based on news coverage taken off of LexusNexis.

Prediction:

Empirically, I hope to find an increase in charitable contributions in the year of a scandal and in the years following it. Additionally I expect to find that companies shift charitable contributions towards projects that are more transparent to the public.

Regression

To test this I will look at the reports of companies that have faced negative shocks and compare charitable contributions for a two year period following the crisis to the prior five year period. I will control for company size, prior charitable contributions, number of times the company has faced litigation, profits...not sure at this point what else but I know there are more.

1.

Charitable donations as percentage of revenues = a + B(dummy for negative shock or not) + C (prior contributions) + D(# of employees) + F(# of times faced litigation) + G(profits) + company fixed effects + e

2.

# of relevant articles concerning company and charity following negative shock = a + B(dummy for negative shock or not) + C (prior contributions) + D(# of employees) + F(# of times faced litigation) + G(profits) + company fixed effects + e

Initial Concerns and Issues:

My primary concerns lie in the reliability of the regressors used to determine charitable donations and the number of articles concerning a company’s charitable contribution. First, it is difficult to determine what constitutes a sufficient negative shock in this experiment. There is a possibility for measurement error based due to flaws in my judgment. Furthermore, a lot of the regressors could be skewed by company specific data. It will hence be difficult to guarantee normality in the data. Effects could be company specific and be skewed largely by one large company with a major scandal (like an Enron). Also, I think I need a better way to control for company size than # of employees. Second, picking out a random sample of companies is difficult. Using any index will create bias towards either small or large companies.

Omitted variable bias could also play a factor. Changes in the tax codes could affect both company contributions (charitable tax incentives) and the probability of a shock (raising taxes could cause companies to cook the books) and therefore invalidate the coefficients of the regression.

I hope to be able to overcome these factors.

All input is deeply appreciated

// posted by Varun Akula @ 10:55 PM