CSR and Corporate Financial Performance: An Inter-Sectorial Analysis

This study examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP), shedding new light on the lack of academic consensus and prevailing failure to deal with endogeneity in data. To this purpose, the authors recalculate ESG performance starting from the four pillars (economic, environmental, governance and social) provided by Thomson Reuters’ Asset4 database, able to determine a firm’s CSP. We adjust each ESG pillar score accounting for the firm’s sector, size and headquarter geographic area. We empirically test the relationship with a Generalized Method of Moments approach (GMM) in order to tackle the widely disputed endogeneity issues arising in this type of datasets. Results highlight a positive relationship between CSR, as measured in a tailored manner in this study, and corporate financial performance.