ESG and stock performance link under economic crisis: The Australian evidence
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Date
2024
Department
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Mcode
Degree programme
Accounting
Language
en
Pages
87+19
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Abstract
89 percent of investors consider ESG issues in some form but the academic community is debating whether ESG investing leads to higher returns. Earlier research has shown that ESG investing could be related to risk resilience, which might indicate higher financial performance, however, there is lack of recent empirical evidence from the Australian markets. In this research, I address these topics and study the link between ESG Performance and financial performance in ASX markets during Covid-19 crisis. I use an investor-focused perspective, with stock performance as the key financial performance metric due to its universal acceptance as a corporate financial performance measure. Using ESG performance data from Refinitiv, I conduct correlation and single and multiple linear regression analyses for two time periods (panic-period and Covid-19 period) to investigate whether higher ESG performance led to higher stock performance during the pandemic in Australia. I also conduct an additional portfolio analysis with a matching methodology to further study the industry and size factors. The results indicate no statistically significant relationship during panic-period, while weak negative and statistically significant relationship is found during Covid-19 period. However, the Covid-19 period link is challenged by the additional analysis, and this study concludes that ESG performance and stock performance had no significant link during the Covid-19 pandemic in Australia. Importantly, the findings are inconsistent with the instrumental stakeholder theory. The main academic contributions of this study relate to recent empirical evidence from the ASX markets (1) offering new empirical evidence to ESG performance and stock performance link under economic crisis, (2) suggesting that higher ESG performance may have provided risk resilience towards the Covid-19 pandemic and (3) suggesting that ESG investing strategies do not harm financial returns. Additionally, (4) this study developed the methodology by Bialkowski & Slawik (2022) further and the developed, new methodology could be used in future studies.Description
Thesis advisor
Huikku, JariKeywords
ESG, ESG investing, ESG performance, covid-19, economic crisis, Australia