ESG - Costello

George Mason University’s Business for a Better World Center (B4BW) recently convened an in-person Stakeholder Roundtable on the subject of Corporate Governance. The half-day event took place at Point of View International Retreat & Research Center at Mason Neck in Lorton, VA on October 21.

For most drivers in the U.S., obeying a stop sign upon approaching an intersection is an unavoidable annoyance. But for Mason finance professor Jiasun Li, it’s a problem waiting to be solved. His recent working paper proposes a simple and economical improvement: removing one stop sign from every four-way intersection. According to his calculations, this would boost not only driver safety, but environmental sustainability as well. 

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been on the business leadership agenda for more than 50 years, yet executives and corporate boards still demand to see the "business case" for CSR. Clearly, CSR’s familiarity as a concept has not translated into coherent ideas of where it fits into the cost-benefit calculations that motivate business strategy. A forthcoming article in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis by Lei Gao, associate professor of finance at George Mason University School of Business, Jie (Jack) He (of University of Georgia) and Juan (Julie) Wu (of University of Nebraska – Lincoln) goes beyond the business case to form cause-and-effect connections involving companies’ CSR efforts.