The economic and political developments of the past years show an increasing importance of a possible risk-reducing of the company due to good ESG performance. Our work contributes by examining the impact of relatively better ESG performance of companies on their implied and historical share...

Agencies around the world are in the process of developing taxonomies and standards for sustainable (or ESG) investment products. A key assumption in our model is that of non-consequentialist private investors (households) who derive a "warm glow" decisional utility when purchasing an investment...

In this paper, we examine the performance of an impact investing strategy using the most ethical companies to build an impact investing portfolio. We test the time-series and cross-sectional returns of the impact portfolio, explore the financial analyst coverage of the most ethical firms, and...

The question of whether environmental, social, and governance investments outperform or underperform other conventional financial investments has been debated in the literature. In this study, we compare the volatility of rates of return of selected ESG indices and conventional ones and...

The present paper proposes an overview of the existing literature covering several aspects related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Specifically, we consider studies describing and evaluating ESG methodologies and those studying the impact of ESG on credit risk, debt and...

In this article, we use a meta-analysis to examine the performance of socially responsible investing (SRI). After a thorough literature search, we review 153 empirical studies containing 1,047 observations of SRI performance. We find that, on average, SRI neither outperforms nor underperforms...

The paper enquires into the long-term effect of development finance institutions (DFI) on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies of companies in which they have invested. It does this through a review of secondary data on the ESG policies of ten companies operating in Africa and...

There are diverging results in the literature on whether engaging in ESG related activities increases or decreases the financial and systemic risks of firms. In this study, we explore whether maintaining higher ESG ratings reduces the systemic risks of firms in a stock market context. For this...

This study empirically investigates the effect of an Islamic label on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Islamic firms in Indonesia and Malaysia that are characterized by lower debt and lower non-sharia compliant income and have a higher ethical standard are expected to...

This article attempts to bring quantitative evidence of a firm's sustainability reporting in terms of non-financial voluntary disclosures. The disclosures are made available through the annual report and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) report. ESG...

Mit der Einführung der EU-Taxonomie möchte die Europäische Kommission den Grundstein zur Finanzierung nachhaltigen Wachstums und zur Umsetzung der europäischen Klimaziele legen. Die für die Umsetzung des EU Green Deals erforderlichen Investitionen für Umwelt- und Klimaschutz bis 2050 sind...

This paper develops and applies an equilibrium model that accounts for ESG demand and supply dynamics. In equilibrium, ESG preference shocks represent a novel risk source characterized by diminishing marginal utility and positive premium. Expected green asset returns are negatively associated...

In the past decades, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been discussed as the "stakeholder approach" of managing firms, while opposing researchers have taken on views of CSR being at the "shareholder's expense". We aim to link this discussion with various factors that have been proposed...

Sustainable investing is growing into its moment. Funded pensions, which were among the first institutions to respond to sustainability concerns, are showing renewed interest in better ways to reflect responsible investing objectives, along with regulators, asset managers and shareholder groups....

Interest in measuring companies’ behavior along economic, social, and governance (ESG) criteria reflects two important objectives: social values and financial performance. Nevertheless, measuring these has been difficulty, leading to confusion about ESG investing’s effectiveness. New data...

Despite the increased attention and capital incentives around corporate sustainability, the development of sustainability reporting standards and monitoring systems has been progressing at a slow pace. As a result, companies have misaligned incentives to deliberately or selectively communicate...

The ESG (environmental, social, and governance) practice has become very important in contemporary business and it is believed to have a significant impact on firm value. However, there still lacks a consensus on the underlying mechanism connecting ESG and firm value. We argue that ESG can...

We exploit a modification to Sustainalytics' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating methodology, which is subsequently adopted by Morningstar, to study whether ESG ratings are salient for stock pricing. We show that the inversion of the rating scale but not new information leads some...

We study the design features of disclosure regulations that seek to trigger the green transition of the global economy and ask whether such regulatory interventions are likely to bring about sufficient market discipline to achieve socially optimal climate targets. We categorize the transparency...

Investments in firms related to environment, social responsibility and corporate governance (ESG) aspects have recently grown, attracting interest from both academic research and investment fund practice. This paper develops a simple new portfolio optimization approach to include ESG in...

This paper uses R/S analysis and fractional integration techniques to examine the persistence of two sets of 12 ESG and conventional stock price indices from the MSCI database over the period 2007-2020 for a large number of both developed and emerging markets. Both sets of results imply that...

This article describes and analyses the recent significant increase in Australia of resolutions proposed by shareholders focused on environmental, social and governance (‘ESG’) issues. The research is placed in the context of the legal framework in which shareholder resolutions are advanced....

The evolution of sustainable finance to mainstream finance has been motivated by a growing demand for the financial sector to play a greater role in the transformation of the current economic model into a more sustainable one. The introduction of the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable...

I present the first study that systematically examines the implications of ESG adoption for the credit ratings business. I find that, with a recent move by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s towards incorporating ESG issues into their analysis, credit ratings positively reflect firms with lower...

As the largest sovereign wealth fund (SWF) in the world, the Norwegian SWF’s efforts to move in a more sustainable direction are often followed by other institutional investors. This chapter examines how the Norwegian SWF (officially, the Government Pension Fund – Global, or GPFG) has...

This Note provides an overview of the debate around the current state of ESG disclosure practices, and the perceived need for the SEC to establish a system of mandatory ESG disclosures. Part I explores the inherent difficulty of defining ESG, the problematic nature of quantifying and measuring...

In the time-series (ordinal ESG) or the cross-section (cardinal ESG)? We show analytically that, when proper adjustment to guarantee identical ESG ratings is implemented, the return spread of the factors produced by the two methods is merely noise. We provide a protocol to construct a...

While practitioners call for long-term managerial compensation to promote firms’ commitment in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, little direct evidence exists on the role managerial incentive horizon plays in firms’ ESG performance. Exploiting two alternative identification...

The "ESG lending" market, where loan contract terms are contingent on borrower ESG performance (i.e., ESG-linked loans), or where loans are issued for specific green projects (i.e., Green loans), has grown exponentially from $6 billion in 2016 to $173 billion in 2019. Much of this growth is...