RESPONSABILITA' SOCIALE

Prof. Leonardo Becchetti

Research on sustainable development and on the role of social
responsibility of firms, consumers and financial investors

Versione italiana

“In recent years we saw many times government and corporations forced to reconsider and change their policies for the bottom up pressure from grassroot movements and civil societies… This is the kind of pressure we need in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals“[1]
Kofi Annan
UN General Secretary
“La Repubblica” 18 December 2002.

We still tend to conceive productivity and growth as mainly made of physical products while most of GDP is currently made of services and "immaterial goods". Are there available paths for the development of a "socially and environmentally sustainable", lighter economy ? By selling bundles of products/processes containing solidarity or environmental values we may reconcile the pursuit of economic rights and the fight to poverty with the goal of increasing welfare and happiness.

Our research activity aims to explain how socially responsible consumption and savings may involve ordinary people in this process, creating a bottom-up pressure to increase social and environmental responsibility of corporations and institutions and fostering the reform of global governance.

Research papers

1) Ethical investment funds: their role and a comparison of their performance vis-à-vis traditional investment funds

2) The determinants of child labour: the role of trade rules and the likely impulse of socially responsible trade

3) Fair trade: its direct and indirect effects on the solution of several "market failures"

4) Empirical analysis on the behaviour of socially responsible consumers preliminary version