Essays on corporate social responsibility and socially responsible investment.

Summary Our thesis deals with the themes of corporate social responsibility (CSR), its relationship with the economic and financial performance of the company, and socially responsible investment (SRI). These themes have recently gained in popularity, favored by a context of economic and environmental crisis. Our thesis consists of four main chapters. Our first chapter is a review of the academic literature on CSR and SRI. We propose an interdisciplinary review of the academic literature shared between economics and management sciences (ethics applied to companies, strategy and finance). Our second chapter is an empirical analysis of the relationship between CSR and corporate financial performance from the perspective of the cost of capital. We examine the impact of the publication of a CSR policy rating on the liquidity of a firm's shares and the size of its shareholder base. Our third and fourth chapters analyze the properties of SRI portfolios constructed using new allocation methods. Thus, we analyze how risk-based allocation strategies modify the performance of portfolios of financial assets issued by issuers with a CSR policy, and conversely how an investment universe composed only of issuers with a CSR policy modifies the properties of these alternative allocations.