Seminari - Florian Kiesel

Florian Kiesel (Free University of Bozen Bolzano) will present his paper “Managing ESG ratings?”, joint work with Jan Schnitzler (Grenoble Ecole de Management)

Abstract 

Exploiting exogenous variations in ESG ratings due to a change of Refinitiv’s ESG rating methodology in 2020, we examine whether firms respond to a reduction in ESG ratings. We find that firms who suffered from relative ESG rating downgrades subsequently manage to increase their scores again. We find that the improvements are mainly related due to enhanced information production, such as ESG disclosure or responding to ESG surveys. In contrast, we find no evidence that firms show real ESG outcome, such as improvements in emission reduction, proxied by “green” revenues or less GHG intensity.