In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., the US Supreme Court dramatically restricted the scope of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), holding that the statute does not permit victims of human rights abuses to sue foreign corporations for violations of international law that took place entirely abroad. We draw on three unique characteristics of the decision to estimate its effect on companies’ valuations. First, we show that extractive industry firms with headquarters abroad experienced larger cumulative abnormal returns following the ruling. By contrast, similar US-based firms—which generally remain subject to ATS liability—did not benefit from the decision. Second, we demonstrate that foreign-based firms benefited both on the final decision date and on the earlier date when the Court slated the case for reargument on the issue of extraterritoriality. Third, we show that this effect varied with the human rights records of host countries: mining firms based abroad with subsidiaries in countries with poor human rights records benefitted most. Although our results cannot resolve debates over the merit of ATS suits, we do show that the Kiobel decision mattered: for foreign firms, it decreased the cost of doing business under regimes with records of human rights violations. (JEL G14, K13, K33, K41, L72)

中文翻译：

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衡量外国人侵权法规责任的经济影响

在Kiobel诉荷兰皇家石油公司一案中，美国最高法院对《外国人侵权法》（ATS）的范围进行了严格限制，认为该法规不允许侵犯人权行为的受害者起诉外国公司违反国际法的行为。完全放在国外。我们利用该决策的三个独特特征来估计其对公司估值的影响。首先，我们表明，总部位于国外的采掘业公司在裁定后经历了较大的累积异常收益。相比之下，类似的美国公司（通常仍需承担ATS责任）并未从该决定中受益。其次，我们证明，外国公司在法院最终决定在域外问题上重新提起诉讼的最终决定日期和较早的日期都受益。第三，我们表明，这种影响随东道国的人权记录而异：在国外设有人权记录不良国家的子公司的矿业公司受益最大。尽管我们的结果不能解决有关ATS诉讼价值的辩论，但我们确实表明Kiobel决定很重要：对于外国公司而言，它降低了在有侵犯人权记录的体制下开展业务的成本。（JEL G14，K13，K33，K41，L72）它降低了在有侵犯人权记录的政权下开展业务的成本。（JEL G14，K13，K33，K41，L72）它降低了在有侵犯人权记录的政权下开展业务的成本。（JEL G14，K13，K33，K41，L72）