Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility by a Multinational Firm and International Privatization Policies

We consider a multinational global firm that adopts corporate social responsibility (CSR) in two countries and examine international privatization policies with the strategic transmission of CSR. We find that the strategic level of CSR crucially depends on the percentage of the global firm’s shares held in each country. We show that single privatization increases (decreases) CSR when the share is small (large), while dual privatization always leads to the highest CSR. We also show that domestic welfare under global standard of CSR, which is set to improve global welfare, is higher (lower) than that under the global firm’s strategic CSR when the share is small (large). Finally, we show that dual nationalization is a unique equilibrium in an international privatization choice game, irrespective of imposing the global standard of CSR, which causes global welfare loss.