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).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 8th June 2024, 02:09:04pm EDT
Session Chair: Pedro Matos, University of Virginia Darden School of Business Discussant: Richard Evans, Darden - University of Virginia
Location:Room 1203
Presentations
Discretionary Information in ESG Investing: A Text Analysis of Mutual Fund Prospectuses
Angie Andrikogiannopoulou1, Philipp Krueger2, Shema Frédéric Mitali3, Filippos Papakonstantinou1
1King's College London; 2University of Geneva; 3SKEMA Business School
We construct novel measures of mutual funds’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitment by analyzing the discretionary investment-strategy descriptions of their prospectuses. We find that fund flows respond strongly to text-based ESG measures. Using discrepancies between text- and fundamentals-based ESG measures, we identify greenwashing funds. We find that greenwashing is more prevalent since 2016 (coinciding with the Paris Agreement) and among funds with lower past flows and higher expense ratios, and isn't associated with superior subsequent performance. Furthermore, greenwashers attract similar flows to genuinely green funds, suggesting that investors cannot distinguish them. Our results could help regulators' efforts to combat ESG-related misconduct.