The purpose of this paper is to test whether or not CSR disclosure (i.e. aggregate as well as its three sub-indicators) reduces the cost of debt for French corporations listed in the SBF 120 index between 2010 and 2015.,CSR disclosure ratings of firms were collected from the Bloomberg database under three dimensions such as environmental, social and governance (ESG). Then, a pooled regression analysis was run.,The results indicate that overall CSR disclosure score as a combination of ESG disclosure scores has a negative effect on the cost of debt (i.e. lowers the cost of debt). While environmental disclosure is negatively associated with the cost of debt, social disclosure is unexpectedly positively associated, and governance disclosure has an insignificant association with the cost of debt.,The study has two main limitations. First, the analysis does not consider contractual constraints and obligations that might exist in debt contracts (Jung et al., 2018). Second, the analyses cover a specific time period (i.e. between 2010 and 2015) for a specific country (i.e. France) excluding utilities and the financial sector.,Overall, it is inferred from the results that financial markets for lenders take into account CSR disclosure when assessing the creditworthiness of borrowers. Specifically, environmental disclosure is the only subdimension of CSR that is influential on creditors’ decisions to offer favorable interest rates. In line with this outcome, companies can assess their processes and be more aligned with eco-friendly practices, and investors are particularly advised to invest in those types of firms.,This study extends scant literature on the association between CSR and the cost of debt by exploring how creditors treat CSR dimensions dissimilarly in granting loans to firms. The findings of this study have particular importance as financial debt is one of the most predominant forms of external financing.

中文翻译：

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企业社会责任披露与贷方相关吗？来自法国的经验证据

本文的目的是检验2010年至2015年间，企业社会责任披露（即合计及其三个子指标）是否降低了在SBF 120指数中列出的法国公司的债务成本。这些数据是从彭博（Bloomberg）数据库中按三个维度（例如环境，社会和治理（ESG））收集的。然后，进行了汇总回归分析。结果表明，总体CSR披露评分与ESG披露评分的组合会对债务成本产生负面影响（即降低债务成本）。尽管环境披露与债务成本负相关，社会披露却出乎意料地正相关，而治理披露与债务成本之间却无关紧要。该研究有两个主要局限性。第一，该分析未考虑债务合同中可能存在的合同约束和义务（Jung等人，2018）。其次，分析涵盖特定国家（例如法国）的特定时间段（即2010年至2015年），不包括公用事业和金融部门。总体而言，从结果推断，贷方金融市场考虑了CSR披露在评估借款人的信誉时。具体而言，环境披露是企业社会责任的唯一子类别，它会影响债权人提供优惠利率的决定。根据这一结果，公司可以评估其流程并更符合环保做法，尤其建议投资者投资于此类公司。这项研究通过探索债权人在授予企业贷款时如何对待CSR维度不同，扩展了有关CSR与债务成本之间关系的文献。由于金融债务是外部融资的最主要形式之一，因此本研究的发现特别重要。