The quiet life hypothesis posits that entrenched managers are well-insulated from removal and thus prefer to enjoy a quiet life, i.e. they tend to be less ambitious, avoid difficult decisions, and engage in less risk-taking (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2003). We utilize the staggered board (or...

We show that a firm's CSR policy is significantly influenced by the CSR policies of firms in the same 3-digit zip code, an effect possibly due to investor clienteles, local competition, and/or social interactions. We then exploit the variation in CSR across the zip codes to estimate the effect...