IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/amu/wpaper/2307.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Socially Responsible Investment and Pro-social Change

Author

Listed:
  • Martha Starr

Abstract

Socially responsible investment (SRI) refers to investing in companies based on financial and social performance, where the latter includes such concerns as the environment, sweatshop labor, and animal testing. This paper argues that SRI strongly resembles pro-social behaviors and social dynamics found in experimental settings. The role of fairness-related sanctioning is emphasized, wherein companies that treat their various stakeholders “fairly” are screened into SRI portfolios, while those treating them poorly are screened out. It is argued that, because SRI creates opportunities for businesses to thrive relative to their competitors by improving social performance, it creates some scope for pro-social change. Still, the magnitude of changes that can be expected from voluntary changes in business behavior remains to be determined.

Suggested Citation

  • Martha Starr, 2007. "Socially Responsible Investment and Pro-social Change," Working Papers 2007-23, American University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:amu:wpaper:2307
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://w.american.edu/cas/economics/repec/amu/workingpapers/2007-23.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2007
    Download Restriction: no

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Steven Scalet & Thomas Kelly, 2010. "CSR Rating Agencies: What is Their Global Impact?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 94(1), pages 69-88, June.
    2. Jo, Tae-Hee, 2011. "Heterodox Critiques of Corporate Social Responsibility," MPRA Paper 35367, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Matthew Lee & Jillian Kohler, 2010. "Benchmarking and Transparency: Incentives for the Pharmaceutical Industry’s Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 95(4), pages 641-658, September.
    4. repec:dau:papers:123456789/7349 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social responsibility; pro-social behavior; fairness; investment decisions; corporate culture;

    JEL classification:

    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    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:amu:wpaper:2307. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Thomas Meal). General contact details of provider: http://www.american.edu/cas/economics/ .

    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.

    We have no references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.