Sell-side analysts’ assessment of ESG risk
Financial analysts closely follow a firm’s operations and assess the risks that it faces. In this paper, we examine whether analysts incorporate ESG risks into their stock recommendations and target prices. Specifically, we use a unique firm-day level dataset on negative ESG risk incidents to proxy for unobservable risk assessments of analysts. We find that analyst outputs predict future ESG incidents, suggesting that analysts incorporate ESG risks into their models. Our results are robust to controlling for ESG incidents that firms experienced in the past, and are stronger in more transparent information environments, and in the presence of more guidance on ESG issues from the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Importantly, we find that analysts incorporate ESG risks through adjusting discount rates rather than cash flow estimates. Overall, our results highlight the ability of financial analysts to synthesize and integrate ESG risks into their research.
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jacceco.2024.101759
- Volume
- 79 (2-3)
- Pages
- 101759
- Language
- en
- Export
- BibTeX
- Sources
- semanticscholar openalex crossref