Abstract

In the last two decades in the OECD countries a growing number of firms have been certified as Socially Responsible (CSR is the acronym of Corporate Social Responsibility). This kind of certification is assigned by private companies that guarantee that the behaviour of a certain firm is environmentally and sociologically correct. Economic literature is studying the main push factors for certification and in particular it is trying to verify if there is a link between Social Responsibility certification and firms' performance. Their results are ambiguous and seem to support the idea that the CSR firms are more virtuous, having better performances in the long run: they bear some initial costs but obtain higher sales and profits due to several causes: reputation effect, a reduction of long-run investment costs, increasing socially responsible demand.