Corporate risk-taking, economic policy uncertainty and ESG performance: International evidence

Abstract

Corporate risk-taking, which aims to maximize shareholders' profits, has raised concerns regarding potential conflicts with Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investments. We address this gap by investigating the relationship between corporate risk-taking and ESG performance using an international sample from 20 economies spanning 2000 to 2022, while carefully accounting for endogeneity based on GMM, Heckman sample selection bias and simultaneous equations. Our findings reveal a significantly negative relationship, suggesting a trade-off between the two, which aligns with the conservation of resources (COR) theory. Furthermore, the COR theory is integrated with agency theory and stakeholder theory when examining subsamples of high and low corporate governance scores. Additionally, we find that economic policy uncertainty (EPU) positively moderates this relationship, particularly in high-income economies and for large firms. This effect is evident during the post-2008 subprime crisis period but dissipates in the post-COVID-19 era. The overall findings have several important theoretical and practical implications for the literature.