The explosion in ESG research has led to a strong reliance on ESG rating providers. We document widespread changes to the historical ratings of a key rating provider, Refinitiv ESG (formerly ASSET4). Depending on whether the original or rewritten data are used, ESG-based classifications of firms into ESG quantiles and tests that relate ESG scores to returns change.
While there is a positive link between ESG scores and firms’ stock market performance in the rewritten data, we fail to observe such a relationship in the initial data. The ESG data rewriting is an ongoing rather than a one-off phenomenon.
Using natural language processing, we identify and categorize the corporate goals in the shareholder letters of the 150 largest companies in the United...
In this paper, I analyse the main trade-offs between the economic value of the firm and its social value exploring how they are solved through corporate...