Based on Whitley's "National Business Systems" (NBS) institutional framework (Whitley 1997;, we theorize about and empirically investigate the impact of nation-level institutions on firms' corporate social performance (CSP). Using a sample of firms from 42 countries spanning seven years, we construct an annual composite CSP index for each firm based on social and environmental metrics. We find that the political system, followed by the labor and education system, and the cultural system are the most important NBS categories of institutions that impact CSP. Interestingly, the financial system appears to have a relatively less significant impact. We discuss implications for research, practice and policy-making.

An increasing number of companies make sustainability investments, and an increasing number of investors integrate sustainability performance data in their capital allocation decisions. To date however, the prior academic literature has not distinguished between investments in material versus immaterial sustainability issues. We develop a novel dataset by hand-mapping data on sustainability investments classified as material for each industry into firm-specific performance data on a variety of sustainability investments. This allows us to present new evidence on the value implications of sustainability investments. Using calendar-time portfolio stock return regressions we find that firms with good performance on material sustainability issues significantly outperform firms with poor performance on these issues, suggesting that investments in sustainability issues are shareholder-value enhancing. Further, firms with good performance on sustainability issues not classified as material do not underperform firms with poor performance on these same issues, suggesting investments in sustainability issues are at a minimum not value-destroying. Finally, firms with good performance on material issues and concurrently poor performance on immaterial issues perform the best. These results speak to the efficiency of firms' sustainability investments, and also have implications for asset managers who have committed to the integration of sustainability factors in their capital allocation decisions.

Using survey data from a sample of senior investment professionals from mainstream (i.e. not SRI funds) investment organizations we provide insights into why and how investors use reported environmental, social and governance (ESG) information. The primary reason survey respondents consider ESG information in investment decisions is because they consider it financially material to investment performance. ESG information is perceived to provide information primarily about risk rather than a company's competitive positioning. There is no one size fits all, with the financial materiality of different ESG issues varying across sectors. Lack of comparability due to the lack of reporting standards is the primary impediment to the use of ESG information. Most frequently, the information is used to screen companies with the most often used method being negative screening. However, negative screening is perceived as the least investment beneficial while full integration into stock valuation and positive screening considered more beneficial. Respondents expect negative screening to be used less in the future, while positive screening and active ownership to be used more.

More than 120 countries require or permit the use of International Financial Reporting Standards ('IFRS') by publicly listed companies on the basis of higher information quality and accounting comparability from IFRS application. However, the empirical evidence about these presumed benefits are often conflicting and fail to separate between information quality and comparability. In this paper we examine the effect of mandatory IFRS adoption on firms' information environment. We find that after mandatory IFRS adoption consensus forecast errors decrease for firms that mandatorily adopt IFRS relative to forecast errors of other firms. We also find decreasing forecast errors for voluntary adopters, but this effect is smaller and not robust. Moreover, we show that the magnitude of the forecast errors decrease is associated with the firmspecific differences between local GAAP and IFRS. This finding suggests that it is IFRS adoption rather than a correlated unobservable factor that is causing forecast errors to decrease. Exploiting individual analyst level data and isolating settings where analysts would benefit more from either increased comparability or higher quality information, we document that the improvement in the information environment is driven both by information and comparability effects. These results suggest that mandatory IFRS adoption has improved the quality of information intermediation in capital markets and as a result firms' information environment by increasing both information quality and accounting comparability. JEL Classification: M41, G14, G15

Using a sample of 4,278 listed UK firms, we construct a social network of directorshipinterlocks that comprises 31,495 directors. We use social capital theory and techniques developed in social network analysis to measure a director's connectedness and investigate whether this connectedness is associated with their compensation level and their firms overall performance. We find connectedness is positively associated with compensation and with the firm's future performance. The results do not support the view that executive and outside directors use their connections to rent extract. Rather the company compensates these individuals for the resources these better connections provide to the firm.JEL Classification: G30, G32, J33, L22, M41.