IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pia/wpaper/96-2011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How to measure Corporate Social Responsibility

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Nicolosi
  • Stefano Grassi
  • Elena Stanghellini

Abstract

Compliance with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards may require capacity that varies from one aspect to the other and companies in different industries may encounter different difficulties. Since CSR is a multidimensional concept, latent variable models may be usefully employed to provide a unidimensional measure of the ability of a firm to fulfil CSR standards. A methodology based on Item Response Theory has been implemented on the KLD sustainability dataset. Results show that companies in the industries Oil & Gas, Industrials, Basic Materials and Telecommunications have a higher difficulty to meet the CSR standards. Criteria based on Environment, Community relations and Product quality have a large capacity to select the firms with the best CSR performance, while Governance does not exhibit similar behavior. A stock selection based on the ranking of the firms according to our CSR measure outperforms, in terms of risk-adjusted returns, stock selection based on other criteria.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Nicolosi & Stefano Grassi & Elena Stanghellini, 2011. "How to measure Corporate Social Responsibility," Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia, Finanza e Statistica 96/2011, Università di Perugia, Dipartimento Economia.
    • Handle: RePEc:pia:wpaper:96/2011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.ec.unipg.it/quaderni/qd_96web.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cristiana Mǎnescu, 2011. "Stock returns in relation to environmental, social and governance performance: Mispricing or compensation for risk?," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(2), pages 95-118, March/Apr.
    2. Leonardo Becchetti & Rocco Ciciretti, 2011. "Stock Market Reaction to the Global Financial Crisis: testing for the Lehman Brothers'Event," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 70(2), pages 3-58, July.
    3. Michael Hopkins, 2005. "Measurement of corporate social responsibility," International Journal of Management and Decision Making, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(3/4), pages 213-231.
    4. Stephen Brammer & Chris Brooks & Stephen Pavelin, 2006. "Corporate Social Performance and Stock Returns: UK Evidence from Disaggregate Measures," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 35(3), pages 97-116, September.
    5. Bauer, Rob & Koedijk, Kees & Otten, Roger, 2005. "International evidence on ethical mutual fund performance and investment style," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 1751-1767, July.
    6. Derwall, Jeroen & Koedijk, Kees & Ter Horst, Jenke, 2011. "A tale of values-driven and profit-seeking social investors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 2137-2147, August.
    7. Stefano Herzel & Marco Nicolosi & Cătălin Stărică, 2012. "The cost of sustainability in optimal portfolio decisions," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3-4), pages 333-349, May.
    8. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    9. Huij, Joop & Derwall, Jeroen, 2011. "Global equity fund performance, portfolio concentration, and the fundamental law of active management," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 155-165, January.
    10. Karen Benson & Timothy Brailsford & Jacquelyn Humphrey, 2006. "Do Socially Responsible Fund Managers Really Invest Differently?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 65(4), pages 337-357, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leonardo Becchetti & Nazaria Solferino & Maria Elisabetta Tessitore, 2016. "Corporate social responsibility and profit volatility: theory and empirical evidence," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 25(1), pages 49-89.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Nicolosi & Stefano Grassi & Elena Stanghellini, 2014. "Item response models to measure corporate social responsibility," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(22), pages 1449-1464, November.
    2. Benjamin R. Auer, 2016. "Do Socially Responsible Investment Policies Add or Destroy European Stock Portfolio Value?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 135(2), pages 381-397, May.
    3. Guillermo Badía & Luis Ferruz & Maria Céu Cortez, 2021. "The performance of social responsible investing from retail investors' perspective: international evidence," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 6074-6088, October.
    4. Luis Ferruz & Fernando Muñoz & María Vargas, 2012. "Managerial Abilities: Evidence from Religious Mutual Fund Managers," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 105(4), pages 503-517, February.
    5. Gariet WS Chow & Robert B Durand & SzeKee Koh, 2014. "Are ethical investments good?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 39(4), pages 645-665, November.
    6. Leite, Paulo & Cortez, Maria Céu, 2014. "Style and performance of international socially responsible funds in Europe," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 248-267.
    7. Auer, Benjamin R. & Schuhmacher, Frank, 2016. "Do socially (ir)responsible investments pay? New evidence from international ESG data," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 51-62.
    8. Guillermo Badía & Maria C. Cortez & Luis Ferruz, 2020. "Socially responsible investing worldwide: Do markets value corporate social responsibility?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(6), pages 2751-2764, November.
    9. Sabastian Utz & Maximillian Wimmer, 2014. "Are they any good at all? A financial and ethical analysis of socially responsible mutual funds," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 15(1), pages 72-82, February.
    10. Shirasu, Yoko & Kawakita, Hidetaka, 2021. "Long-term financial performance of corporate social responsibility," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    11. Luluk Widyawati, 2020. "A systematic literature review of socially responsible investment and environmental social governance metrics," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 619-637, February.
    12. Delâtre, Chloë, 2022. "Désinvestissement des combustibles fossiles: quelles conséquences pour la gestion de portefeuille ? [Fossil fuel divestment and portfolios implications]," MPRA Paper 114633, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Linda Yu, 2014. "Performance Of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds," Global Journal of Business Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 8(3), pages 9-17.
    14. Sebastian Lobe & Christian Walkshäusl, 2016. "Vice versus virtue investing around the world," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 303-344, March.
    15. Muñoz, Fernando, 2016. "Cash flow timing skills of socially responsible mutual fund investors," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 110-124.
    16. Lars Hornuf & Gül Yüksel, 2022. "The Performance of Socially Responsible Investments: A Meta-Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 9724, CESifo.
    17. Belghitar, Yacine & Clark, Ephraim & Deshmukh, Nitin, 2014. "Does it pay to be ethical? Evidence from the FTSE4Good," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 54-62.
    18. Boudt, Kris & Cornelissen, Jonathan & Croux, Christophe, 2013. "The impact of a sustainability constraint on the mean-tracking error efficient frontier," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 119(3), pages 255-260.
    19. Omneya Abdelsalam & Meryem Duygun & Juan Carlos Matallín-Sáez & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2014. "Is Ethical Money Sensitive to Past Returns? The Case of Portfolio Constraints and Persistence of Islamic and Socially Responsible Funds," Working Papers 2014/19, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    20. Juan Carlos Matallín-Sáez & Amparo Soler-Domínguez & Emili Tortosa-Ausina, 2019. "Does active management add value? New evidence from a quantile regression approach," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 70(10), pages 1734-1751, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Socially Responsible Investment; CSR ability; latent variable model; item response theory;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G19 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pia:wpaper:96/2011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ubaldo Pizzoli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deperit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.