Academic Research Lab

• Amel-Zadeh, A.; Serafeim, G. “Why and How Investors Use ESG Information: Evidence from a Global Survey.”
• Amel-Zadeh, Amir and Lustermans, Rik and Pieterse-Bloem, Mary. “Sustainability and Private Wealth Investment Flows” (February 24, 2021).
• Atz, U., Van Holt, T., Douglas, E., & Whelan, T. (2019). “The Return on Sustainability Investment (ROSI): Monetizing Financial Benefits of Sustainability Actions in Companies.” Review of Business, 39(2).
• Atz, Ulrich and Van Holt, Tracy and Liu, Zongyuan Zoe and Bruno, Christopher. “Do Corporate Sustainability and Sustainable Finance Generate Better Financial Performance?”
• Barko, Tamas and Cremers, K. J. Martijn and Renneboog, Luc. “Shareholder Engagement on Environmental, Social, and Governance Performance.” Finance Working Paper N° 509/2017 July 2021.
• Bauer, Rob and Ruof, Tobias and Smeets, Paul. “Get Real! Individuals Prefer More Sustainable Investments” (February 21, 2019).
• Berg, F., Koelbel, J.F. and Rigobon, R., 2019. “Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings”. Working paper.
• BlackRock, “Sustainability: The future of investing”.
• BlackRock, “Sustainable investing: resilience amid uncertainty”
• Boze, B.; Krivitski, M.; Larcker, D.F.; Tayan, B.; Zlotnicka, E. “The Business Case for ESG.”
• Cao, J.; Titman, S.; Zhan, X.; Zhang, W.E. “ESG Preference, Institutional Trading, and Stock Return Patterns.”
• Capelle-Blancard, Gunther, and Aurélien Petit. “Every little helps? ESG news and stock market reaction.” Journal of Business Ethics 157, no. 2 (2019): 543-565.
• Ceccarelli, Marco & Ramelli, Stefano & Wagner, Alexander F, 2021. “When investors call for climate responsibility, how do mutual funds respond?,” Finance Working Paper N° 659/2020.
• Chatterjee, S. (2018). “Fund Characteristics and Performances of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds: Do ESG Ratings Play a Role?”
• Chatterji, Aaron K., Rodolphe Durand, David I. Levine, and Samuel Touboul. “Do ratings of firms converge? Implications for managers, investors and strategy researchers.” Strategic Management Journal 37, no. 8 (2016): 1597-1614.
• Cheng, Ing-Haw, Harrison G. Hong, and Kelly Shue. “Do managers do good with other peoples' money?” In AFA 2013 San Diego Meetings Paper, pp. 12-47. 2016.
• Ciciretti, R.; Dalò, A.; Dam, L. “The Contributions of Betas versus Characteristics to the ESG Premium.”
• Clark, C., & Lalit, H. (2020). “ESG Improvers: An Alpha Enhancing Factor. Rockefeller Capital Management.”
• Cochran, Philip L., and Robert A. Wood. “Corporate social responsibility and financial performance.” Academy of Management Journal 27, no. 1 (1984): 42-56.
• Cui, B.; Docherty, P. “Stock Price Overreaction to ESG Controversies.”
• Das, N., Chatterje, S., Ruf, B., & Sunder, A. (2018). “ESG Ratings and the Performance of Socially Responsible Mutual Funds: A Panel Study.”
• De Angelis, Tiziano and Tankov, Peter and Zerbib, Olivier David. “Climate Impact Investing” (June 25, 2021).
• Dhaliwal, Dan S., Oliver Zhen Li, Albert Tsang, and Yong George Yang. “Voluntary nonfinancial disclosure and the cost of equity capital: The initiation of corporate social responsibility reporting.” The Accounting Review 86, no. 1 (2011): 59-100.
• Dorfleitner, G.; Halbritter, G.; Nguyen, G. “Measuring the level and risk of corporate responsibility. An empirical comparison of different ESG rating approaches.”
• Douglas, E., Van Holt, T., & Whelan, T. (2017). “Responsible Investing: Guide to ESG Data Providers and Relevant Trends.”
• Duc Cuong Pham, Thi Ngoc Anh Do, Thanh Nga Doan, Thi Xuan HongNguyen & Thi Kim Yen Pham. “The impact of sustainability practices on financial performance: empirical evidence from Sweden” 2021.
• Eccles, R. G., & Stroehle, J. C. (2018). “Exploring social origins in the construction of ESG measures.” Available at SSRN 3212685.
• Eccles, Robert G., and Svetlana Klimenko. “Shareholders Are Getting Serious About Sustainability.” Harvard Business Review, 24 Nov. 2020
• Erhardt, J. “The Search for ESG Alpha by Means of Machine Learning—A Methodological Approach.”
• Escrig-Olmedo, E.; Fernández-Izquierdo, M.Á.; Ferrero-Ferrero, I.; Rivera-Lirio, J.M.; Muñoz-Torres, M.J. “Rating the Raters: Evaluating how ESG Rating Agencies Integrate Sustainability Principles.”
• Evans, J.R.; Peiris, D. “The Relationship between Environmental Social Governance Factors and Stock Returns.”
• Financial Times, “Coronavirus is strengthening the hand of ESG investors.”
• Flammer, Caroline. “Corporate social responsibility and shareholder reaction: The environmental awareness of investors.” Academy of Management Journal 56, no. 3 (2013): 758-781.
• Gary, S.N. “Best Interests in the Long Term: Fiduciary Duties and ESG Integration.”
• Gary, S.N. “Values and Value: University Endowments, Fiduciary Duties, and ESG Investing.”
• Gibson, Rajna and Krueger, Philipp and Mitali, Shema. “The Sustainability Footprint of Institutional Investors: ESG Driven Price Pressure and Performance” (September 7, 2020).
• Giese, G.; Nagy, Z. “How Markets price ESG? Have Changes in ESG Scores Affected Stock Prices?”
• Glossner, Simon. “ESG Incidents and Shareholder Value” (February 17, 2021).
• Grewal, Jody, Edward J. Riedl, and George Serafeim. “Market reaction to mandatory nonfinancial disclosure.” Management Science (2019).
• Griffin, Paul A., and Yuan Sun. “Going green: Market reaction to CSRwire news releases.” Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 32, no. 2 (2013): 93-113.
• Gunnar Friede, Timo Busch & Alexander Bassen. “ESG and financial performance: aggregated evidence from more than 2000 empirical studies” 2015
• Gutsche, Gunnar; Wetzel, Heike; Ziegler, Andreas. “Determinants of individual sustainable investment behavior - A framed field experiment,” MAGKS Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics, No. 33-2020.
• Hartzmark, Samuel M. and Sussman, Abigail B. “Do Investors Value Sustainability? A Natural Experiment Examining Ranking and Fund Flows” (March 25, 2019).
• Hoepner, Andreas G. F. and Oikonomou, Ioannis and Sautner, Zacharias and Starks, Laura T. and Zhou, Xiaoyan. “ESG Shareholder Engagement and Downside Risk” (April 30, 2021).
• Hübel, B., & Scholz, H. (2020). “Integrating sustainability risks in asset management: The role of ESG exposures and ESG ratings.”
• Hübel, B.; Scholz, H.; Webersinke, N. “Performance of S&P 500 ESG Indices: The Impact of Weighting Methodologies and ESG Ratings”.
• Ioannou, Ioannis, and George Serafeim. “The impact of corporate social responsibility on investment recommendations: Analysts' perceptions and shifting institutional logics.” Strategic Management Journal 36, no. 7 (2015): 1053-1081.
• Khan, M. “Corporate Governance, ESG, and Stock Returns around the World.”
• Khan, M., G. Serafeim and A. Yoon. (2015). “Corporate Sustainability: First Evidence on Materiality.”
• Kim, Soohun and Yoon, Aaron. “Analyzing Active Managers' Commitment to ESG: Evidence from United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment” (March 17, 2020).
• Kim, Yongtae, Haidan Li, and Siqi Li. “Corporate social responsibility and stock price crash risk.” Journal of Banking & Finance 43 (2014): 1-13.
• Klassen, Robert D., and Curtis P. McLaughlin. “The impact of environmental management on firm performance.” Management Science 42, no. 8 (1996): 1199-1214.
• Kotsantonis, S., Rehnberg, C., Serafeim, G., Ward, B., & Tomlinson, B. (2019). “The Economic Significance of Long-Term Plans.”
• Krüger, Philipp. “Corporate goodness and shareholder wealth.” Journal of Financial Economics 115, no. 2 (2015): 304-329.
• Laermann, M. “The Significance of ESG Ratings for Socially Responsible Investment Decisions: An Examination from a Market Perspective.”
• Latino, Carmelo; Pelizzon, Loriana; Rzeźnik, Aleksandra (2021). “The power of ESG ratings on stock markets.” SAFE Working Paper, No. 310.
• Martin, M. “Making Impact Investible” Impact Economy.
• Morningstar, “Sustainable Funds Continue to Rake in Assets During the Second Quarter.”
• Morningstar, “Sustainable Stock Funds Held Their Own in Second-Quarter Rally.”
• Nagy, Z., A. Kassam and L. Lee. (2016). “Can ESG Add Alpha? An Analysis of ESG Tilt and Momentum Strategies.”
• Nagy, Z.; Cogan, D.; Sinnreich, D. “Optimizing Environmental, Social and Governance Factors in Portfolio Construction: Analysis of Three ESG-Tilted Strategies.”
• Naughton, James P., Clare Wang, and Ira Yeung. “Investor Sentiment for Corporate Social Performance.” The Accounting Review (2019).
• Nisar Ahmad, Asma Mobarek & Naheed Nawazesh Roni. “Revisiting the impact of ESG on financial performance of FTSE350 UK firms: Static and dynamic panel data analysis” 2021
• Philipp Bien, Saad Iqbal, Amy Li, Ian Stecher, Rob Manger. “Comparing Environmental, Social, andGovernance Ratings Across Stock Exchanges”
• Rajna Gibson & Simon Glossner & Philipp Krueger & Pedro Matos & Tom Steffen, 2020. “Responsible Institutional Investing Around the World.” Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 20-13.
• Schmidt, A.B. “Optimal ESG Portfolios: An Example for the Dow Jones Index”
• Schramade, W. “Integrating ESG into Valuation Models and Investment Decisions: The Value Driver Adjustment Approach.”
• Serafeim, George. “Public Sentiment and the Price of Corporate Sustainability.” Financial Analysts Journal 76.2 (2020): 26-46.18
• Starks, Laura T. and Venkat, Parth and Zhu, Qifei. “Corporate ESG Profiles and Investor Horizons”
• Turban, Daniel B., and Daniel W. Greening. “Corporate social performance and organizational attractiveness to prospective employees.” Academy of Management Journal 40, no. 3 (1997): 658-672.
• Waddock, Sandra A., and Samuel B. Graves. “The corporate social performance–financial performance link.” Strategic Management Journal 18, no. 4 (1997): 303-319.
• Wu, J., Lodorfos, G., Dean, A., & Gioulmpaxiotis, G. (2017). “The Market Performance of Socially Responsible Investment during Periods of the Economic Cycle—Illustrated Using the Case of FTSE.”
• Zerbib, Olivier David. “A Sustainable Capital Asset Pricing Model (S-CAPM): Evidence from Green Investing and Sin Stock Exclusion” (October 13, 2020).

• ESG Taxonomies, frameworks, regulations & disclosure requirements
  • The EU Taxonomy of Sustainable Economic Activities: Exploring the EU taxonomy system.
  • UK Green Taxonomy
  • Principles for Responsible Investments
  • Provision of Non-Financial Data: Mapping of Stakeholders, Products and Services.
  • European and UK regulations summary.
  • Green Finance Education Charter (Green Finance Institute)
  • Building a Global ESG Disclosure Framework: A path forward
• ESG articles and papers addressing important strategic issues?
  • ESG Investing: Practices, Progress and Challenges
  • Learning From The EU Approach.
  • Setting a Global Standard for Nonfinancial Information:
  • Setting a Global Sustainable Accounting Framework.
  • Six Trends Transforming Finance for a Sustainable Economy
  • How Financial Centers Across All Continents Are Mobilizing Their Capital, Resources, Connectivity, And Expertise To Align With The Objectives Of A Sustainable Financial System
  • Sustainable Investment in the European Asset Management Industry: Defining and Sizing ESG Strategies
  • The Role of Green Finance and its Challenges for Europe
  • ESG Impact Is Hard To Measure But Not Impossible: Going beyond ESGs
  • Sustainable Finance and the General Public
  • ESG data sets - A wide variety of environmental, social and governance data sets freely available for your analysis.

Some examples of research Act Analytics are supporting or looking to support includes:

1. Environmental performance of companies as measured through news.
2. How does diversity of a company’s board translate to diversity sentiment and shareholder value?
3. Use of news sentiment for investor insight into sustainability linked loans.
4. How does banks financing of fossil fuels translate into environmental news sentiment.
5. How does news sentiment analysis combat greenwashing? How does ESG news sentiment compare to CSR disclosed ratings?
6. How have corporations performed on Social justice and labor rights during Covid and their market implications?

There are no open Hackathon sprints at this time. Please check frequently for updates.