The Moral Preferences of Investors: Experimental Evidence / Jean-François Bonnefon, Augustin Landier, Parinitha R. Sastry, David Thesmar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bonnefon, Jean-François.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Landier, Augustin.

Sastry, Parinitha R.

Thesmar, David.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w29647.

NBER working paper series no. w29647

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

We characterize investors' moral preferences in a parsimonious experimental setting, where we auction stocks with various ethical features. We find strong evidence that investors seek to align their investments with their social values ("value alignment"), and find no evidence of behavior driven by the social impact of investment decisions ("impact-seeking preferences"). First, the willingness to pay for a stock is a linear function of corporate externalities, and is symmetric for positive or negative externalities. Second, whether charity transfers are contingent or independent on investors buying the auctioned stock does not affect their WTP. Our results are thus compatible with a utility model where non-pecuniary benefits of firms' externalities only accrue through stock ownership, not through the actual impact of investment decisions. Finally, non-pecuniary preferences are linear and additive: willingness to pay for social externalities is proportional to the expected sum of charity transfers made by firms (even if some of these donations are negative).

Notes:

Print version record

January 2022.