Are listed banks only pretending to be more social

Abstract

It is widely accepted that listed organizations have potential to achieve greater economic results. In return, they are expected to provide reliable information on its economic and financial activity in a timely and accurate manner; and also, non-financial or sustainability information since 2018. Nowadays, organizations demonstrate not only their economic performance, but also their social commitment. Therefore, financial institutions attempt to be both economically and socially efficient. This paper tries to resolve this specific issue: determining whether listed financial institutions are more economically and socially efficient, due to the fact that, as they are listed and bigger, they can spend more resources in communication. But we do not know whether they truly are more socially efficient or simply have a reputation as such. To give an answer to this question a three-stage Data Envelopment Analysis has been used, which includes Spanish financial institutions Panel Data from 2014 to 2019.