Leviathan Inc. and Corporate Environmental Engagement

In a 2010 special report, The Economist magazine termed the resurgence of state-owned, publicly listed enterprises “Leviathan Inc.” and criticized the poor governance and low efficiency of these firms. We compile a new comprehensive data set of state ownership of publicly listed firms in 44 countries over the period of 2004–2017 and show that state-owned enterprises are more responsive to environmental issues. The effect is more pronounced in economies lacking energy security and strong environmental regulation, and among firms with more local operations and higher domestic government ownership. We find a similar effect on corporate social engagement but not on governance quality. These results suggest a different role for “Leviathan Inc.,” especially in dealing with environmental externalities. This paper was accepted by Management Science Special Issue on Business and Climate Change.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Management Sciences

• Publication date

  2017-04-30

• Fields of study

  Computer Science, Economics, Political Science, Business, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2139/SSRN.2960832
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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