Business Commons^™

Consumers’ Reaction To Corporate Esg Performance: Evidence From Store Visits, Frank Weikai Li, Frank Weikai Li, Roni Michaely

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using micro-level data on consumer shopping behavior, this paper investigates end-consumers’ attitudes toward firms’ ESG behavior, and as importantly, the ability of consumers to affect firms’ policy concerning sustainability issues. We find that consumers care about firms’ approach toward ESG, and consumers’ behavior can impact firms’ attitudes. Using ESG incidents as a proxy, we find that the reduction in store visits is more pronounced for ESG-conscious consumers, such as those living in democratic counties, and counties with a higher fraction of educated and younger residents. Online shopping interest data yields similar results. Using abnormally hot temperature as a shock to …

The Market-Essential Role Of Corporate Climate Disclosure, George S. Georgiev

Faculty Articles

This Article focuses on capital market efficiency as an often-downplayed legal rationale for mandating corporate climate disclosure, and explores it alongside the notion of investor demand, which has assumed a prominent and, increasingly, contested role in debates on climate disclosure. Because market efficiency (encompassing both securities price accuracy and overall capital market allocative efficiency) is generally unobservable, many commentators have instead emphasized the highly visible investor demand for climate-related disclosure as evidenced by shareholder proposals, voting behavior, stewardship policies, and public statements. Unfortunately, investor demand can be disputed, fairly or unfairly, because investor preferences are heterogeneous, dynamic, and difficult to …

The Global Sustainability Footprint Of Sovereign Wealth Funds, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With the emergence of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) around the world managing equity of over $8 trillion, their impact on the corporate landscape and social welfare is being scrutinized. This study investigates whether and how SWFs incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations in their investment decisions in publicly listed corporations, as well as the subsequent evolution of target firms' ESG performance. We find that SWF funds do consider the level of past ESG performance as well as recent ESG score improvement when taking ownership stakes in listed companies. These results are driven by the SWF funds that do have …

Esg And Corporate Financial Performance: Empirical Evidence From China's Listed Power Generation Companies, Changhong Zhao, Yu Guo, Jiahai Yuan, Mengya Wu, Daiyu Li, Yiou Zhou, Jiangang Kang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Nowadays, listed companies around the world are shifting from short-term goals of maximizing profits to long-term sustainable environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. People have come to realize that ESG has become an important source of the corporate risk and may affect the company's financial performance and profitability. Recent research shows that good ESG performance could improve the financial performance in some countries. Yet, the question of how does ESG affect financial performance has not been thoroughly discussed and studied in China. In this article, we study China's listed power generation groups to explore the relationship between ESG performance and …

Fossil Fuel Asset Risk Analysis: Clark University Endowment, Travis A. Dodge, B. Maiwand Akbari

Student Works

The environmental and social risks of climate change are well known and perhaps inevitable. The economic and financial risks are less so. The many financial risks associated with climate change embedded in endowment portfolio fossil fuel holdings are leading many institutional stakeholders to enter into dialogue and take action. Divestment is emerging as an effective strategy for limiting portfolio exposure and tackling climate change itself.

Our team’s goals were to assess whether the Clark University endowment portfolio faces any of these risks and evaluate the impacts on asset values. Our findings show that the Clark endowment does face these same …