A #MeToo Lesson for CEOs: Being a Creep Puts Stock Price at Risk

The MeToo movement has cleansed several corporations of notorious sexual harassers. If that’s not enough to get creeps in the C-Suite and elsewhere in the company to amend their ways, here’s something else for them to consider: This type of behavior can do serious damage to the stock price.

Shares of U.S. firms that ranked in the top 2% for harassment complaints made online had returns in the following year that averaged about 20% below what would be expected based on the overall market’s performance and standard asset-pricing models, according to a new study from researchers at Canada’s University of ...