This file was created by the TYPO3 extension publications --- Timezone: CEST Creation date: 2025-07-21 Creation time: 14:36:26 --- Number of references 3 This dissertation explores corporate social responsibility (CSR) and unethical corporate behavior (corporate social irresponsibility, CSI) in a financial context. The four research papers in this dissertation examine the relationship of CSR and CSI with financial performance in a portfolio context and analyze political, cultural, social, and firm-specific factors and their relationship with corporate scandals. This Dissertation also examines how efficient capital markets price corporate scandals and analyzes the relationship between CSR and CSI with corporate payout. thesis_rgbg 2023 6 16 https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/54349 Christian Sparrer article 2022 1879-1751,0167-2681 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 202 Elsevier 762-784 https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/52805 Gregor Dorfleitner Christian Kreuzer Christian Sparrer Based on an extensive international dataset containing Thomson Reuters environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) rating, as well as Thomson Reuters newest controversies and combined score of an average of 2500 companies in the years 2002–2018, this article contributes to the existing discourse of the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance (CFP) by examining the Fama and French (J Financ Econ 116(1):1–22, 2015) five-factor risk-adjusted performance of positive screened best and worst portfolios, based on a 10% cutoff, respectively, for equally, value- and rank-weighted strategies in the European, US and global market. Furthermore, the controversies score allows us to examine the mid-to-long-term effects of scandals on the CFP without having to rely on the event study methodology. Even though a value-weighted strategy does not show any significant abnormal returns, we examined a significant outperformance for equally weighted worst ESG portfolios and best controversies strategies. These results strongly indicate that this is, on the one hand, driven by low-rated smaller companies (“small sinners”) and clean-coated firms with regard to controversies (“silent saints”) on the other hand. The findings hold for several robustness checks such as adjusting the cutoff rates or splitting the dataset across time. article 2020 1470-8272,1479-179X 10.1057/s41260-020-00178-x Journal of Asset Management 21 Springer 393-412 https://epub.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/43486 Gregor Dorfleitner Christian Kreuzer Christian Sparrer