Putting a Price on Corporate Virtue

It has been a buzzword for decades and gained the title of a global megatrend. With many endorsing and others discrediting its importance, what are the real economics of corporate social responsibility? How do we measure sustainability in corporations and who does it benefit? Is any effort appreciated by the market and the public? Is CSR merely in fashion or does it have a concrete place in a quantitative science such as finance? These are some of the questions this book deals with. We discuss the shift from a shareholder-oriented business world towards a stakeholder-oriented system and explore how CSR fairs with the traditional financial theories and corporate law. A new view of CSR sees it as a means to reconciliate the conundrum “shareholders or stakeholders” and gives a paradigm that combines the two. Furthermore, we move past the current belief that investors inject capital into more sustainable corporations while sacrificing returns and investigate the role of sustainability in a firm’s risk profile. What if investors gain less out of responsible investments because they risk less? In the second part of the book, we test how real market actors respond to corporate social performance. We look into the potential of CSR to be incorporated in risk valuations as performed by credit rating agencies, the debt market’s investors and corporate management itself. What we discover is a complex but intriguing reality that offers bright new horizons for corporations worldwide.