Graduation Year

2021

Date of Submission

5-2021

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

Reader 1

Darren Filson

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2021 Stuti Grover

Abstract

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has garnered significant media attention since the death of George Floyd in 2020. While many firms showed solidarity by tweeting support for BLM and racial justice, there has been limited research on the effect of tweeting support for movements on companies’ returns. Using tweets from S&P 500 firms’ official Twitter accounts from May 25th to July 1st, 2020, I conduct event studies to estimate the effect of tweeting support for the BLM movement on firms’ returns.

I find that, on average, firms experienced small, positive, and statistically insignificant cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) during an event window that includes the day of tweeting and the day after. In addition, I find that tweets that mentioned donations are associated with positive, statistically insignificant average CARs. In contrast, tweets that mentioned corporate conversations, raising capital for Black-owned businesses, improving Black leadership representation, and CEO announcements are associated with statistically insignificant negative average CARs. Tweeting on Blackout Tuesday (June 2nd) resulted in statistically significant positive average CARs, and statistical significance of higher CARs holds at the 10% level when firms are grouped into a portfolio (the standard method for accommodating potential cross- sectional correlation in the CARs). In general, tweets from certain firms affected returns, but effects were not homogenous across all firms.

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