This paper treats Corporate Social Responsibility as an investment in corporate reputation andas such aims at investigating the return of that investment. It does so partly by estimating theeffect of being perceived as socially responsible on the firm’s ability to maximize shareholdervalue and partly by estimating the effect on a more traditional accounting based measure offinancial performance. Results indicate that socially responsible firms are able to maximizeshareholder value to a greater extent than less responsible firms while at the same time notnecessarily performing better in traditional accounting terms.