The latest World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos has just concluded, with geopolitical tensions dominating the agenda. Headlines focused less on climate cooperation or inclusive growth than on the prospect of escalating tariff wars (e.g. Hinz et al. 2026), including US President Donald Trump’s renewed threats toward Greenland. Yet Davos was meant to be about something else. The WEF has long championed the idea of stakeholder capitalism – the notion that firms should serve not only shareholders, but also workers, communities, and the environment. This raises a more concrete economic question: Does participation in Davos actually improve firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, and are the substantial participation fees worth paying? Put differently, do companies measurably benefit from showing up in the Alps?

The costs and benefits of attending Davos

The WEF Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland brings together about 3,000 participants from all over the world (see Figure 1). The summit attracts the leadership of global corporations, governments, NGOs, media organisations, and public figures from arts, culture, and sports.

Figure 1 Total number of delegates by country, 2009–2018

Notes: The map shows the total number of WEF participants by country between 2009 and 2018. The total number of yearly attendees increased from 2,282 in 2009 to 2,957 in 2018. Overall, attendees from 155 countries are represented. Most participants come from the United States (7,261), followed by the United Kingdom (2,847), and WEF home country Switzerland (2,073). While the number of attendees from low- and middle-income countries has increased from 454 in 2009 to 712 in 2018, the summit is still dominated by high-income countries. Source: Fuchs et al. (2025).

Attending Davos is costly for companies. Estimates range between US$20,000 and $70,000 per delegate (Ross 2011 Armstrong and Kottasova 2014). These expenses may be considered relatively small if WEF attendance generates a significant value added for companies. For example, attending Davos might help firms to strengthen business networks and attract possible top managers from which companies could benefit in the short and long run. The Annual Meeting may also serve as a valuable opportunity to garner political support from country leaders and other government representatives, or to foster goodwill among civil society representatives.

There are reasons for scepticism. Davos has been described as the “Super Bowl of schmoozing” (Blodget 2015), raising the possibility that attendance yields private benefits to executives rather than measurable gains for firms. Participation may even impose indirect costs, for example if managers are poached by competitors they meet at the summit.

A growing body of research examines the economic consequences of international organisations and firms’ political connections. Much of this work focuses on country-level outcomes such as trade, investment, or reputational effects (e.g. Maggi 1999, Rose 2004, 2005, Nitsch 2007, Egger and Larch 2011, Gray and Hicks 2014, Dreher et al. 2015). A related literature studies how political ties shape firm-level outcomes, including stock market performance and credit ratings (e.g. Dreher and Voigt 2011, Moser and Rose 2011, Davies and Studnicka 2018, Gehring and Lang 2020, Luechinger and Moser 2014, 2020, Acemoglu et al. 2014, Brown and Huang 2020, Child et al. 2021). Yet little is known about whether participation in elite global forums such as the World Economic Forum in Davos yields measurable benefits at the firm level, particularly in terms of corporate social responsibility and ESG performance.

Our recent paper (Fuchs et al. 2025) addresses this question by examining whether attending Davos yields tangible benefits for companies. We started by constructing a novel database of WEF attendees over the 2009–2018 period. We then compared firms’ stock returns, credit ratings, and ESG scores in years when they attend Davos with years when they do not, using firm, country-year, and sector-year fixed effects and event-study methods. Importantly, many large global firms never attend Davos at all, providing a meaningful comparison group of otherwise similar companies.

If Davos participation generates economic value – and if financial markets incorporate such information efficiently – firms represented at the WEF should exhibit stronger stock market performance in years they attend than in years they do not. Similarly, if participation enhances firms’ reputation or access to policymakers, credit ratings might improve. At the same time, the WEF promotes social engagement and corporate responsibility as central elements of stakeholder capitalism (Schwab 2008). If this agenda has bite, firms attending Davos may also perform better on ESG measures, particularly along social dimensions. The organisation fosters social engagement of their member companies and thus claims to also provide a public good beyond a mere networking opportunity.

No economic benefit, but positive stakeholder effects

Across a wide range of specifications, we find no evidence that attending Davos improves firms’ stock market performance or credit ratings. Figure 2 illustrates this result using an event-study design. We compare the coefficients of the standard fixed effect estimator (model 1) with three estimators that account for different types of biases (models 2–4) that may occur in the presence of heterogeneous treatment effects. Despite different estimation techniques, all four estimation methods show a very robust null effect of attending the annual meeting at Davos on stock market performance. This suggests that the absence of financial gains is robust.

Figure 2 Annual event study results for returns

Notes: The dependent variable is annual excess returns of shares included in the MSCI-ACWI which are calculated as the relative change of the end-of-the-year closing rate measured in US$. The points denote the point estimates of the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). The bars show the confidence interval at the 95% level (solid color) and at the 90% level (lighter shade). Time is relative time since first treatment. Model 1 (in pink) depicts results for the standard two-way fixed effects (TWFE) estimator. Model 2 (in orange) controls for dynamic treatment effects and only considers the not-yet-treated firms as a control group, thus excluding the never treated (Sun and Abraham, 2021). Model 3 (in yellow) implements the method suggested by Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021), which also controls for dynamic treatment effects but uses the never treated as control group only. Model 4 (in green) follows de Chaisemartin and D’Haultfœuille (2023) and De Chaisemartin and d’Haultfoeuille (2024), who propose an estimator that is capable of correcting the bias of non-absorbing treatment.
Source: Fuchs et al. (2025).

Even at higher frequency, markets do not appear impressed: a daily event study shows no positive abnormal stock returns for attending firms during or immediately after the Davos meetings. We find only a small exception: firms attending Davos for the first time receive slightly better credit ratings, but the effect is economically modest and does not translate into higher stock market returns.

The picture looks different when we turn to stakeholder outcomes. The WEF presents itself as a platform for promoting social responsibility and stakeholder engagement (Schanzenbach and Sitkoff 2020). Consistent with this narrative, we find that Davos participation is associated with higher ESG performance, particularly in the social dimension. Figure 3 shows that firms’ social ESG scores rise following attendance, with no evidence of pre-existing trends and statistically significant improvements emerging after participation.

The magnitude of the effect is economically meaningful. The social ESG score increases by about 1.7 points on a 0–100 scale – roughly 7% of a standard deviation. These improvements are thus concentrated in areas such as human rights policies, workforce practices, product responsibility, and community engagement. Taken together, the results suggest that while Davos does not generate measurable financial gains for shareholders, it is associated with changes in firms’ social performance that are consistent with the Forum’s stakeholder-oriented mission.

Figure 3 Annual event study results for ESG social score

Notes: The dependent variable is the ESG social score, as reported by LSEG (2024). The points denote the point estimates of the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). The bars show the confidence interval at the 95% level (solid color) and at the 90% level (lighter shade). Time is relative time since first treatment. Model 1 (in pink) depicts results for the standard two-way fixed effects (TWFE) estimator. Model 2 (in orange) controls for dynamic treatment effects and only considers the not-yet-treated firms as a control group, thus excluding the never treated (Sun and Abraham, 2021). Model 3 (in yellow) implements the method suggested by Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021), which also controls for dynamic treatment effects but uses the never treated as control group only. Model 4 (in green) follows de Chaisemartin and D’Haultfœuille (2023) and De Chaisemartin and d’Haultfoeuille (2024), who propose an estimator that is capable of correcting the bias of non-absorbing treatment.
Source: Fuchs et al. (2025).

Conclusions and outlook

Do firms benefit from showing up in Davos? From a narrow shareholder value perspective, the answer appears to be no. We find no consistent evidence that participation in the WEF improves firms’ stock market performance or creditworthiness – not even in the short run around the meetings themselves.

However, this does not imply that Davos is merely a boondoggle. Instead, our results suggest a different channel of influence. Firms that attend Davos tend to improve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance, particularly along the social dimension. In an era in which investors, regulators, and the public increasingly scrutinise corporate social behaviour, this type of reputational and stakeholder alignment may matter more than immediate financial gains. For firms, Davos may be less about boosting short-term financial performance and more about signalling alignment with social expectations in an era of stakeholder scrutiny.

Davos, then, may be less a venue for striking deals that move share prices and more a stage on which firms signal their commitment to broader social expectations. This interpretation is consistent with the WEF’s emphasis on stakeholder capitalism: participation appears to be associated with changes in how firms position themselves vis-a`-vis employees, communities, and society at large, rather than with direct boosts to shareholder value.

Our research is only a first step toward understanding the effects of one of the world’s most prestigious summits. Davos’ influence may well extend beyond firm-level metrics. For example, it is of interest to examine whether individual delegates benefit from Davos attendance in terms of career progression, compensation, professional networks, or job satisfaction. The summit may also matter for public discourse: intense media coverage and the visible presence of political and business elites could influence how citizens perceive globalisation, corporate responsibility, and international cooperation. Finally, as formal multilateral institutions come under strain, elite gatherings such as Davos may increasingly serve as arenas of soft influence, where ideas, alliances, and economic narratives are negotiated.

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