Do unhealthy cities produce unhealthy returns?

Nicole Choi, John R. Nofsinger and Corey A. Shank

International Journal of Corporate Governance, 2025, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: We examine how firms headquartered in poor health communities affect their stock returns and valuations. We find that poor health throughout a community, measured through obesity rates, self-reported poor health status, and self-reporting poor physical or mental health, lowers stock returns and creates lower valuations. Specifically, we find that a 1% increase in overweight rates is associated with $100 billion in lost value to the USA stock market. Furthermore, this effect is more prominent in stocks with more retail investors. This suggests that poor community health influences local investor behaviour more strongly than employees affect local stock returns. These results have important implications as obesity rates continue to rise throughout the world.

Keywords: stock performance; health; obesity; mental health; physical health. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=144248 (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:ids:ijcgov:v:15:y:2025:i:1:p:1-27

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Corporate Governance from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().