La value relevance del bilancio sociale: il caso delle banche europee

This paper aims to test whether the publication of a social report provides information about the firm’s market value. We applied value-relevance analysis to the social reporting variable on a sample of 130 European listed banks, analysed from 2002 to 2008, to understand whether investors believe that the social report plays a role equivalent to that traditionally attributed to accounting variables. Our findings do not show a significant correlation between the publication of a social report and the stock price. We conclude that investors do not attribute a value-relevant to social report. However, cross-country analysis shows that national realities are very different. In some countries, the social report is seen as value-relevant and positively affects the stock price; in other countries, the social report remains value-relevant but negatively affects the stock price