ACTING GREEN: PRIVATE ENVIRONMENTAL COALITIONS IN THE US

Expone Juan Pablo González (New York University)

How much can we trust voluntary actions from the private sector to reduce greenhouse gasses emissions and protect the environment? Despite many claims and calls for action, we know little about how firms can voluntarily adjust their behavior to become more environmentally friendly. In this paper, I analyze the effect of joining private pro environmental coalitions for publicly traded firms in the US. I find that joining these coalitions do not change firms’ environmental performance, a result that holds for many specifications and checks. Why do firms incur in the costs of creating and maintaining these coalitions, then? I show that shareholders’ pressure can explain this behavior. Taken together, these findings suggest that apparent initiatives by the private sector could be just a signal to relevant actors without meaningful effects on environmental outcomes.

Palabras clave: climate change, environmental policy, corporate governance, shareholder proposals