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The change in the cost of capital that results from a divestiture strategy can be closely approximated by a simple function of three parameters: (1) the fraction of socially conscious capital, (2) the fraction of targeted firms in the economy and (3) the return correlation between the targeted firms and the rest of the stock market. When calibrated to current data, we demonstrate that the impact on the cost of capital is too small to meaningfully affect real investment decisions. We then derive the conditions that would be required for the strategy to have a meaningful impact. We empirically corroborate our theoretical results by studying firm changes in ESG status and are unable to detect an impact of ESG divestiture strategies on the cost of capital of treated firms. Our results suggest that to have impact, instead of divesting, socially conscious investors should invest and exercise their rights of control to change corporate policy

This paper contributes to the literature by examining the impact of different forms of state ownership on corporate innovation and the moderating effects of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and corruption in this ownership–innovation nexus. Building on both agency theory and institutional theory, we identify and divide the ultimate controlling shareholders into three types: central government, local government, and private shareholders. This study draws on data from 2629 listed firms in China between 2007 and 2015. Our results suggest that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) controlled by the central government show the strongest innovation performance in all scenarios. In addition, private firms outperform local SOEs in terms of patent quantity in both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing sectors and in high-economic-development regions, whereas local SOEs outperform their private peers with respect to patent quality, mainly in the manufacturing sector and high-economic-development regions. Such an ownership–innovation nexus is then found to be more pronounced for firms engaging in more ESG practices, during periods of higher EPU, and when less corruption is present. These findings demonstrate the value of diversity in state capitalism in guiding SOEs' heterogeneous innovation activities in emerging economies

We investigate two related questions about the trade-off between the short-term pressures on managers to meet earnings targets and the long-term environmental benefits of reduced pollution. Do firms release more toxins by cutting back on pollution abatement costs to boost earnings in years they meet earnings benchmarks? If so, is that relation weaker for firms with higher environmental ratings? Using Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data on toxic emissions, we find that U.S. firms pollute more when they meet or just beat consensus earnings per share (EPS) forecasts, suggesting that meeting expectations is a more important goal than reducing pollution. We find this relation is stronger, not weaker, for firms with higher environmental ratings: they increase pollution even more when meeting earnings benchmarks than firms with lower ratings. This suggests that highly rated firms build regulatory and reputational slack over time and use it when needed to soften the negative impact of increased pollution. We contribute to the real earnings management and environmental economics literatures by documenting a negative externality of financial reporting incentives on the environment and society. We also contribute to the corporate sustainability literature by showing that an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) focus does not curb managerial short-termism

The changing face of responsible investing (RI) raises an important question concerning whether social responsibility influences the decision making of institutional investors in the “sin” industries. This study addresses this issue by investigating whether and how the implementation of various government initiatives concerning environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues affect the institutional ownership of casino firms in Macao, the world's gaming capital. Employing structural equation modeling, this study further examines whether and how RI makes financial sense in this special industry. The results show that the implementation of all four ESG-improving government initiatives (including an anticorruption campaign, visa restriction, smoking bans, and responsible gambling) leads to a significant increase in the institutional ownership of casino firms in general, demonstrating the presence and mechanism of RI in the “sin” industries. Such RI is then found to be conducive to a lower equity risk of casino firms in general. The results also illustrate that these intuitional investors are not one homogeneous group. The norm-constrained institutions are the prominent responsible investors and can help strengthen the equity risk management of casino companies whereas the natural arbitrageurs do not undertake any significant role in this regard. The results are robust across various estimation techniques, model specifications and alternative measures of firm risk

We construct optimal portfolios of mutual funds whose objectives include socially responsible investment (SRI). Comparing portfolios of these funds to those constructed from the broader fund universe reveals the cost of imposing the SRI constraint on investors seeking the highest Sharpe ratio. This SRI cost crucially depends on the investor’s views about asset pricing models and stock-picking skill by fund managers. To an investor who strongly believes in the CAPM and rules out managerial skill, that is, a market index investor, the cost of the SRI constraint is typically just a few basis points per month, measured in certainty-equivalent loss. To an investor who still disallows skill but instead believes to some degree in pricing models that associate higher returns with exposures to size, value, and momentum factors, the SRI constraint is much costlier, typically by at least 30 basis points per month. The SRI constraint imposes large costs on investors whose beliefs allow a substantial amount of fund-manager skill, that is, investors who heavily rely on individual funds’ track records to predict future performance. ( JEL G11, G12, C11) In 2005, when we released what ultimately proved to be the final version of this study, socially responsible investment (SRI) had already become a major presence on the investment landscape. In the years since, this approach, now often called “sustainable” investment, has grown even more rapidly and often encompasses a broad set of “ESG” (environmental, social, and governance) criteria. As evidence of the rapid growth, Morningstar (2020) notes, “one need look no further than the nearly fourfold increase in assets that flowed into sustainable funds in the United States in 2019.” Sustainable investing has also received increased attention in the academic literature, in subsequent studies too numerous to list. Some of the studies are especially related to ours in that they also examine mutual funds. In our study, mutual funds constitute an asset universe faced by an investor imposing an SRI/ESG constraint. A number of the subsequent studies use mutual funds to address other dimensions of sustainable investing. For example, Bollen (2007), Benson and Humphrey (2008), Renneboog, Ter Horst, and Zhang (2011), Bialkowski and Starks (2016) and Hartzmark and Sussman (2019) investigate determinants of mutual fund flows into sustainable funds versus other funds. Riedl and Smeets (2017) use survey and experimental data to explore investors’ preferences for sustainable funds. Madhavan et al. (2020) examine sustainable active equity mutual funds, relating factor loadings and residual returns to ESG characteristics. While we focus on mutual funds, our study also intends that the basic aspects of the SRI setting extend to other institutional investors. That intent is supported, for example, by the recent evidence of Bolton and Kacperczyk (forthcoming, 2020) providing broader perspectives on the SRI portfolio tilts of various types of institutional investors.One conclusion of our study is that an SRI/ESG constraint is especially binding for investors wishing to tilt toward value or small-cap funds. It seems reasonable to infer that such is still the case, though we have not updated our formal analysis. For example, Morningstar (2020) identifies, as of 2019, 99 sustainable U.S. equity funds categorized within its 3 × 3 style box that sorts along the dimensions of value/blend/growth and small/mid-cap/large. Of those 99 funds, only 8 are classified as value, versus 24 as growth and 67 as blend. Only 7 of the 99 are small-cap funds, versus 79 large-cap and 13 mid-cap. More generally, our 2005 study is early in noting meaningful differences in factor loadings between sustainable versus other funds, in both three- and four-factor models.An SRI/ESG constraint is also especially binding for investors who see much information in individual funds’ historical alphas. The basic reason we discuss in our study is seemingly still at work. That is, despite the rapid growth noted earlier, the number of sustainable funds is still well less than those in the total fund universe, so many of the highest track records appear among funds outside that subset. Not mentioned in our original study is that the case of an investor who sees much information in historical alpha confronts the argument of Berk and Green (2004): if fund flows rationally respond to historical alpha, an investor will not view historical alpha as being informative about future alpha. That argument relies on investors correctly assessing the degree of fund-level decreasing returns to scale. One might view an investor who sees historical alpha as informative about future alpha as also having beliefs that favor a lower degree of decreasing returns to scale, as compared to other investors. Moreover, the equilibrating effects of fund flows might interact with the nonpecuniary utility that SRI-conscious investors derive from their fund choices, as suggested by the evidence of Bollen (2007) that flows respond to returns differently for SRI funds versus conventional funds. In any event, when prior beliefs admit substantial information from historical alphas, Busse and Irvine (2006) find that Bayesian predictive alphas computed as in Pástor and Stambaugh (2002a, 2002b), as are the alphas in our study, do predict future performance.While not one we address, a question often asked is whether sustainable investments perform better or worse than other investments. A number of studies do pursue this question, obtaining a range of findings that include both higher and lower performance for sustainable investments. Pástor, Stambaugh, and Taylor (forthcoming) discuss the challenge in interpreting such findings’ implications about expected future performance. A wedge between ex ante and ex post performance of sustainable investments arises during any period that witnesses unanticipated shifts in either customers’ demands for sustainable products or investors’ demands for sustainable holdings.1 As those authors note, sorting out such effects is an important challenge for future research. Our study conducts its analysis under a variety of asset pricing models and prior beliefs. In each case, an investor conditions on funds’ past returns and thus takes account of any historical performance differences between the sustainable funds and other funds in our sample. We do not, however, include models in which expected asset returns depend on sustainability. In this respect, our study does not attempt to provide direct evidence about a potential relation between sustainability and expected investment performance.We are grateful to the Review of Asset Pricing Studies for the opportunity to publish our original study, which follows below with only the references updated to reflect subsequent publications. The study’s abstract is also unchanged from its original version

We show that political polarization among directors negatively affects corporate board effectiveness by reducing forced CEO turnover-performance sensitivity. Our results are more pronounced in presidential election years and for firms with more monitoring and advising needs. Polarization also increases the departure likelihood for directors who are ideologically distant from the rest of the board, making boards more politically homogeneous over time. Finally, we show that polarization in the boardroom lowers firms' investment- Q sensitivity and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance. Our findings highlight the real economic cost of political polarization

The world of capital markets is constantly evolving, driven by technological advancements and changing global economies, presenting challenges for accounting practitioners. Amid current dynamic capital markets, this paper proposes a pathway for generating innovative accounting research that addresses practitioners’ needs by focusing on three critical financial reporting areas: contingent claim securities, sustainability/ESG metrics, and cryptocurrencies/digital assets. Secondly, to address the complex research challenges before us, I propose that we, as accounting scholars, embrace educational changes that may enhance the early research career success of our doctoral students and junior scholars, given that the accounting industry is on the brink of a profound technological transformation. Finally, I urge us to foster academic change by leveraging our strengths within and across disciplines to meet the accounting challenges and opportunities ahead

According to our survey about climate risk perceptions, institutional investors believe climate risks have financial implications for their portfolio firms and that these risks, particularly regulatory risks, already have begun to materialize. Many of the investors, especially the long-term, larger, and ESG-oriented ones, consider risk management and engagement, rather than divestment, to be the better approach for addressing climate risks. Although surveyed investors believe that some equity valuations do not fully reflect climate risks, their perceived overvaluations are not large

We study the effects of employee welfare policies (EWPs) on labor investments of U.S. firms. We show that EWPs are associated with a significantly weaker pass-through of industry sales shocks to firm employment growth. EWPs’ insulation effect is stronger in states with less generous unemployment insurance, in states with lower wage growth, and in firms relying more on qualified labor. We corroborate our results exploring policy-induced variation in workforce policies from the adoption of Paid Sick Leave laws, and industry-wide shocks to labor ESG incidents. Our findings suggest that EWPs may insure workers against employment fluctuations