Corporate Culture's Impacts On Companies' Asset Prices

This paper explores the quantitative impacts that corporate cultures have on US publicly-traded firms' rate of return on stocks. By studying companies contained in the 2019-launched MIT SMR/Glassdoor Culture 500 index, I employ both the Carhart four-factor model and the Carhart four-factor model with the Culture Factor, a self-generated long-short strategy, to study the excess returns on asset prices associated with differences in corporate cultures. The analysis shows that there is no statistically-significant difference in companies' excess returns on asset prices for those with the best (top 20%) and the worst (bottom 20%) corporate cultures. In addition, the inclusion of the additional risk factor (i.e., the Culture Factor) fails to add explanatory powers to the Carhart four-factor model. Therefore, according to this analysis, company cultures do not offer additional information on asset prices for investors, and they shall not be major factors in investment decisions.