Impacts of Code of ethics on financial performance in the Italian listed companies of bank sector

Over the last two decades academic literature has addressed much attention to the relationship between corporate ethical practices and financial performance. Results however remain contradictory, especially in terms of direction and effectiveness of their connection. Broadly speaking, most theorizing on the link between social and economic indicators assumes that the evidence is insufficient or too contrasting to draw any generalizable conclusions. In this perspective, this study aims to better explain the connection between corporate ethical practices and corporate financial performance, verifying that it is impacted by a large number of key variables. The empirical research is based on a longitudinal study on Italian listed companies operating in the banking sector. The adoption of the code of ethics is considered to measure their ethical practices, while regarding financial performance several accounting indicators are taken into consideration, including some control variables. To process the dataset a panel regression with fixed effect is applied. The paper aims at strengthening recent studies that consider bi-directional causality in the theory that “corporate social responsibility is both a predictor and consequence of firm financial performance”. Thus, the interest of the study lies in the identification of a reverse causality between positive financial performance and ethical orientation of Italian banking services companies.