Credit ratings and corporate ESG behavior

IF 2.9 3区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance Pub Date : 2024-11-01 DOI:10.1016/j.qref.2024.101938

Junyong Lee , Kyounghun Lee , Frederick Dongchuhl Oh

引用次数: 0

Abstract

This study examines the effect of credit rating concerns on corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) behavior. We use the plus or minus test on a large sample of ESG scores and S&P credit ratings of U.S. publicly traded firms from 2003 to 2017. We find that firms with credit rating concerns often increase their ESG activities. This finding holds even after we control for various factors affecting ESG practices. Moreover, firms on the boundary between investment- and speculative-grade ratings significantly improve their ESG performance compared to other cases. Finally, we find evidence that the positive effect of credit rating concerns on ESG activities is pronounced during the global financial crisis and then strengthens further. Overall, our study highlights the impact of credit ratings on corporate ESG behavior. (JEL G24, G32, M14)

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信用评级与企业的环境、社会和公司治理行为

本研究探讨了信用评级问题对企业环境、社会和治理（ESG）行为的影响。我们对 2003 年至 2017 年美国上市公司的 ESG 分数和 S&P 信用评级的大样本进行了加减检验。我们发现，存在信用评级问题的公司往往会增加其 ESG 活动。即使我们控制了影响 ESG 实践的各种因素，这一发现仍然成立。此外，与其他情况相比，处于投资级和投机级评级边界上的公司在环境、社会和公司治理方面的表现明显改善。最后，我们发现有证据表明，信用评级问题对环境、社会和公司治理活动的积极影响在全球金融危机期间非常明显，随后进一步加强。总之，我们的研究强调了信用评级对企业环境、社会和公司治理行为的影响。(JEL G24, G32, M14)

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

6.00

自引率

2.90%

发文量

118

期刊介绍： The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance (QREF) attracts and publishes high quality manuscripts that cover topics in the areas of economics, financial economics and finance. The subject matter may be theoretical, empirical or policy related. Emphasis is placed on quality, originality, clear arguments, persuasive evidence, intelligent analysis and clear writing. At least one Special Issue is published per year. These issues have guest editors, are devoted to a single theme and the papers have well known authors. In addition we pride ourselves in being able to provide three to four article "Focus" sections in most of our issues.