CSR investment efficiency in Indian firms post-2013 Companies Act

We study the efficiency of CSR investment in terms of generating CSR outcomes in Indian firms using a sample of 1295 firm-years over the 2015-2019 period post-2013 Companies Act. Our construct “CSR spending efficiency” is a novel one that is intended to address the concern that past research on CSR has tended to implicitly assume that CSR spending proxies for (or is strongly tied to) CSR performance. Our first research focus is on quantifying the CSR spending efficiencies for Indian firms using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Our second research focus is on studying the impact of two key firm-level variables: managerial ability and family owned and managed ownership status on CSR spending efficiency. We document a significant positive impact of both variables in panel data regressions incorporating relevant controls and Heckman sample correction.