Do Investors Care About Biodiversity?

Do Investors Care About Biodiversity?

Alexandre Garel, Arthur Petit-Romec, Zacharias Sautner, Alexander Wagner

Series number :

Serial Number: 
905/2023

Date posted :

March 27 2023

Last revised :

March 27 2023
SSRN Share

Keywords

  • Biodiversity • 
  • Corporate Biodiversity Footprint • 
  • stock returns

This paper introduces a new proprietary measure of a firm's negative impact on biodiversity, the corporate biodiversity footprint, and studies whether it is priced in the cross-section of stock returns. Using an international sample of firms, we find no evidence that the biodiversity footprint explains these returns, on average.

However, event-study evidence shows that, following the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15), which raised awareness of biodiversity issues, firms with larger corporate biodiversity footprints lost value. This response is consistent with investors revising their valuation of these firms downward upon the prospect that regulations to preserve biodiversity will become more stringent.

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Authors

Real name:
Alexandre Garel
Real name:
Arthur Petit-Romec