Is corporate social responsibility an agency problem? An empirical note from takeovers

We rely on the agency motives of the takeover premium to empirically examine whether and how the acquirer's corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance influences the premiums paid in takeovers. Using a large sample of US takeovers that took place over the period from 1992 to 2014, our results mainly reveal that higher CSR performance at the acquirer level is associated with higher takeover premium which is consistent with the shareholder expense view. Our results continue to hold after a battery of additional analyses.