We analyze whether price fixing firms modify their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities around the revelation of the corporate misconduct. Our paper is the first empirical study to specifically explore the timing and the stability of the new CSR investments in firms involved in corporate misconduct. Our results show that firms that participate in illegal price fixing schemes increase their CSR initiatives around the time when they become the target of an antitrust investigation - not before. Moreover, the new CSR initiatives are mainly concentrated on improving positive CSR rather than in reducing further CSR concerns. Finally, we show that the new CSR efforts are not only associated with lower fines. We find that colluding firms tend to lose sales following a cartel breakup, although the decline in sales is less pronounced for those cartel firms that take anticipatory CSR actions to limit the negative impact of fraud revelation.

我们分析价格固定公司是否围绕公司不当行为的披露而修改了其企业社会责任（CSR）活动。我们的论文是第一个专门研究对参与公司不当行为的公司进行新的CSR投资的时机和稳定性的实证研究。我们的结果表明，参与非法价格固定计划的公司在成为反托拉斯调查的目标时（而不是在此之前）会增加其CSR举措。此外，新的企业社会责任倡议主要集中在改善积极的企业社会责任上，而不是减少对企业社会责任的进一步关注。最后，我们表明，新的CSR努力不仅与较低的罚款有关。我们发现，合谋公司在卡特尔解体后往往会损失销售，