Conference Programme
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available). Note that the schedule is subject to changes.
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Daily Overview |
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Parallel Session 08: Sustainable Systems & Infrastructure Location: Seminar Room 7 (Level 2) Session Chair: Dave Baik, Nanyang Technological University | |
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Does regulatory oversight discipline ESG funds to walk the talk? 1: Lingnan University; 2: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University; 3: Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Investors and regulators are concerned that investment funds use the ESG-investing label to attract investment flows without making real ESG-oriented investments. Exploiting the launch of the SEC’s Climate and ESG Task Force (the Task Force hereafter), we investigate whether securities regulators’ oversight disciplines the funds to “walk the talk.” We show that ESG-labeled funds exhibit an improvement in fund-level ESG performance after the launch of the Task Force. Such changes are more pronounced among ESG funds located closer to the SEC and those whose prospectuses have a greater emphasis on ESG issues. Further analyses reveal that ESG funds claiming negative (positive) screening strategies are more likely to drop (initiate) investments in stocks as claimed in their prospectuses; those claiming ESG integration strategies reduce their investments in firms with negative ESG incidents; those claiming active ownership strategies are more likely to vote to support proposals advocating greater transparency in ESG issues. Collectively, our results suggest the effectiveness of regulatory oversight in disciplining ESG funds to “walk the ESG talk”. | |