Stock Market Reaction to Corporate Crime: Evidence from South Korea

Chanhoo Song () and Seung Hun Han ()
Additional contact information
Chanhoo Song: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Seung Hun Han: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Journal of Business Ethics, 2017, vol. 143, issue 2, No 8, 323-351

Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the impact of corporate crime on the stock market in South Korea. Specifically, we examine the effect of crime type (white-collar vs. street crime, operational vs. financial), industry type (financial vs. industrial), business group affiliation (chaebol-affiliated vs. non-chaebol-affiliated), and corporate governance (strong vs. weak board structure index) on the relationship between corporate crime announcement and stock market reaction. We find negative reactions to stock prices around the announcements of corporate crimes but no significant difference in reactions between announcements of individual and organizational crimes. Individual white-collar crimes have a stronger negative impact on stock prices than do individual street crimes on average, while financial crimes have a significantly greater negative impact than do operational crimes in organizations. Moreover, financial sector firms are impacted more significantly by the announcement of corporate crimes than are non-financial firms. In addition, the stock prices of chaebol-affiliated firms decrease less than do those of non-chaebol-affiliated firms, and those with a higher board committee subindex seem to be influenced less by news of corporate crimes if the size control variable is excluded. Multivariate cross-sectional analyses show consistent findings after controlling for firm-specific factors, crime-type effect, and industry and year effects. The results of this study provide valuable insights because it covers several types of corporate crime, including those committed by individuals and those perpetrated by firms.

Keywords: Corporate crime; White-collar crime; Non-white-collar crime; Financial crime; Operational crime (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-015-2717-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:143:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-015-2717-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-015-2717-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().