Deng, Kang, and Low (2013)

Deng, Xin, Jun-Koo Kang, and Buen Sin Low.  “Corporate Social Responsibility and Stakeholder Value Maximization: Evidence from Mergers.”  Journal of Financial Economics, October 2013.

From the authors' abstract:  "Using a large sample of mergers in the US, we examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) creates value for acquiring firms' shareholders. We find that compared with low CSR acquirers, high CSR acquirers realize higher merger announcement returns, higher announcement returns on the value-weighted portfolio of the acquirer and the target, and larger increases in post-merger long-term operating performance. They also realize positive long-term stock returns, suggesting that the market does not fully value the benefits of CSR immediately. In addition, we find that mergers by high CSR acquirers take less time to complete and are less likely to fail than mergers by low CSR acquirers."

Link (working paper):  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2067416

Link (published version):  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X13001384