Margolis, Elfenbein, and Walsh (2009)

Margolis, Joshua D., Hilary Anger Elfenbein, and James P. Walsh. “Does it Pay to Be Good...And Does it Matter? A Meta-Analysis of the Relationship between Corporate Social and Financial Performance.” Working paper (Harvard University), March 2009.

From the authors’ abstract: “[D]oes it pay to be good? For thirty-five years, researchers have been investigating the empirical link between corporate social performance (CSP) and corporate financial performance (CFP). In the most comprehensive review of this research to date, we conduct a meta-analysis of 251 studies presented in 214 manuscripts. The overall effect is positive but small (mean r = .13, median r = .09, weighted r = .11), and results for the 106 studies from the past decade are even smaller…”

Link:  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=972725