Dong, Lin, Zhan (2015)

Dong, Hui, Chen Lin, and Zintong Zhan.  “Do Analysts Matter for Corporate Social Responsibility? Evidence from Natural Experiments.”  Working paper (The University of Hong Kong), 2015.

From the authors' abstract:  "Relying on brokerage closures and mergers as natural experiments which generate exogenous changes in analyst coverage, our Difference-in-Differences estimator indicates that a reduction in analyst coverage causes firms to engage more aggressively in irresponsible behavior, especially in the dimensions of environmental issues and product quality and safety concerns.  The effects of analyst coverage on irresponsible activities are more pronounced in firms with lower initial analyst coverage, weaker corporate governance and higher financial constraints."

Link:  https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=AFA2016&paper_id=1036