Can mandated adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) improve firm value? Most CSR adoption is purely voluntary. However, governments regularly encourage CSR adoption with soft regulations that vary from simply endorsing and symbolically supporting CSR to requiring the adoption of specific practices. Governments have resisted fully mandating CSR because there is some concern universally that mandated CSR may reduce firm value. There is, however, no empirical clarity as to whether mandated CSR impedes or improves firm value. We address this uncertainty by analyzing the effects of the mandated adoption of CSR that the government of India legislated in 2014. Drawing on a sample of 1,526 publicly traded firms and deploying a combinative analytical framework comprising an event study, regression discontinuity design, and a difference-in-differences technique, we conclude that India’s CSR mandate did, in fact, increase value for all firms bound by the mandate. This value-enhancing effect was greater for foreign firms relative to domestic firms. Our results refute previous research showing that India’s CSR mandate diminished firm value.

强制采用企业社会责任 (CSR) 能否提高公司价值？大多数企业社会责任的采用纯粹是自愿的。然而，政府经常通过软法规鼓励采用 CSR，这些软法规从简单地认可和象征性地支持 CSR 到要求采用特定实践。政府拒绝完全强制执行企业社会责任，因为普遍担心强制执行企业社会责任可能会降低公司价值。然而，对于强制性的企业社会责任是否会阻碍或提高公司价值，没有经验上的明确性。我们通过分析印度政府在 2014 年立法强制采用企业社会责任的影响来解决这种不确定性。利用 1,526 家上市公司的样本并部署一个组合分析框架，包括事件研究、回归不连续性设计、和差异中的差异技术，我们得出结论，印度的企业社会责任授权确实增加了所有受该授权约束的公司的价值。相对于国内公司，这种增值效应对外国公司来说更大。我们的结果驳斥了先前的研究表明印度的企业社会责任使命降低了公司价值。