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Full-Text Articles in Business
Esg And The Market Return, Ran Chang, Liya Chu, Jun Tu, Bohui Zhang, Guofu Zhou
Esg And The Market Return, Ran Chang, Liya Chu, Jun Tu, Bohui Zhang, Guofu Zhou
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We propose an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) index. We find that it has significant power in predicting the stock market risk premium, both in- and out-of-sample, and delivers sizable economic gains for mean-variance investors in asset allocation. Although the index is extracted by using the PLS method, its predictability is robust to using alternative machine learning tools. We find further that the aggregate of environmental variables captures short-term forecasting power, while that of social or governance captures long-term. The predictive power of the ESG index stems from both cash flow and discount rate channels.
Greenwashing: Evidence From Hedge Funds, Hao Liang, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
Greenwashing: Evidence From Hedge Funds, Hao Liang, Lin Sun, Melvyn Teo
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
We find that a non-trivial number of hedge funds that endorse the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment indulge in greenwashing. Hedge funds that greenwash underperform both genuinely green and nongreen funds after adjusting for risk. Consistent with an agency explanation, greenwashers (i) underperform more when incentive alignment is poor, (ii) trigger more regulatory violations, and (iii) report more suspicious returns. By exploiting regulatory reforms that aim to enhance stewardship and curb greenwashing, we provide causal evidence that relates agency problems to greenwashing and fund underperformance. Investors, however, do not appear to discriminate between greenwashers and genuinely green funds.