Narae Lee

Carlson School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 2021-2022 University of Minnesota
Carlson School Travel Fellowship, 2018-2021 University of Minnesota
Finalist, Best Paper, 2020 Academy of Management (International Management Division)
PhD student teaching awards (Instructor; Fundamentals of Management), 2019 University of Minnesota
Conference travel awards, 2019 Alliance for Research Sustainability
Scholarship awards, 2018 Seoul National University Alumni Association

Narae Lee and Jiao Luo, Are native plants green?; Assessing environmental performances of local-owned facilities, Dissertation chapter, Finalizing manuscript for journal submission

(Abstract)

We study the impact of corporate ownership and community conditions on firm environmental pollution. While the existing literature often thinks of environmental pollution as a unitary construct, we emphasize the distinction between toxic emissions, which have immediate but locally bounded impact, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which have gradual but global impact, producing climate change. Using a facility-level panel of all manufacturing facilities in the US from 2010-2018, and leveraging within-facility changes in ownership status, we show that locally owned firms have lower levels of toxic emissions, but they are also less likely to report GHG emissions, and have higher levels of such emissions when they do report them, with these effects being stronger where the owner is not only headquartered locally, but has operations limited to that state. Our study suggests that while the pressures of local embeddedness may drive firms to be more environmentally responsible towards their local community, they also make firms more indifferent to their global environmental impact.

Narae Lee, Where you are from matters; Heterogeneous impact of immigrants on firm environmental pollution, Dissertation chapter, Manuscript in progress

(Abstract)

This study examines the impact of immigrant population on firm environmental performances. Leveraging a longitudinal dataset of 11,909 manufacturing facilities by merging a facility-level emissions data from the EPA and immigrant data from the US census, I document that as the number of immigrant population increases in a locale, toxic pollutions by sample facilities increase.  I further evidence that the effects are stronger when immigrants are at a greater disadvantage in participating in political and civil affairs but weaker for home immigrants, defined as immigrants who originate from the same home country as the focal facility’s parent firm. These results are robust to the use of an instrumental variable as well as a wide variety of alternative measures, specifications, and subsamples. These findings suggest that immigrants exert their influence on firm sustainability through various channels; and that both internal motivations and external pressures are important levers for improving firm environmental performances. The results also suggest the need of policy tools to integrate immigrants into local populations for better environmental outcomes.

Ad-hoc reviewer for Strategic Management Journal

Reviewer for Academy of Management Annual Meetings, for Academy of International Business Annual Meeting, for Strategic Management Society Conference