| dc.description.abstract | This study investigates how the degree of corporate internationalization and corporate social responsibility (CSR) affect bank loan interest rates. I conduct multiple regression analysis by using the ordinary least square method based on the sample drawn of TWSE listed companies from 2013 to 2018. Three main results of this research are as follows. First, in terms of the impact from individual variables, firms enjoy lower bank loan interest rates either if they invest in overseas countries with further cultural distance (CD), or if their ESG score in previous years are higher. By contrast, firms suffer from higher bank loan interest rate if their degree of internationalization, measured by foreign sales ratios, are higher in previous year. Second, when considering the joint impact from both the degree of internationalization and CSR, firms enjoy lower bank loan interest rates if both their depth of internationalization (foreign sales ratio) is lower and ESG score is higher in previous years, or they invest in overseas countries with further CD and have higher ESG score in previous years. Finally, this study demonstrates that for firms attempt to obtain lower bank loan interest rate, the impact from investing in overseas countries with further CD interacts with that from having higher ESG score. This implies that companies need to reconsider allocating limited resources appropriately according to their financial status and investment strategies in order to effectively obtain better loan rates. To sum up, in addition to employing two methods to measure the degrees of internationalization, i.e., foreign sales ratio and the index of CD, this study analyzes the possible tradeoffs between firms’ investment in internationalization and that on improving their ESG scores. Most importantly, the results from this study suggest that when firms attempt to reduce their cost of bank loan borrowing by investment globally, firms should also take into account the cultural distance of the host countries as this may provide companies with advantages of diversification. | en_US |