Ricerc@Sapienza

Recent findings provide evidence that companies highly rated in terms of Environmental,
Social, and Governance (ESG) score report higher excess returns and lower volatility, this being
supported by the assumption that ESG factors are considered, by market agents, as a good proxy for
firms’ financial soundness. The aim of this paper is to investigate how ESG components aect stock
returns. We use a two-step methodology to analyze the performance of companies included in the

ESG issues have reached the banking industry and forced the sector to question why to be compliant. This paper aims at exploring the relationship between the ESG attitude of banks and their financial performance. Using a regression model on 43 European banks, main findings show significant correlation between ESG and value creation, and no relevant correlation between ESG and market performance.

Sustainable development has raised, in recent decades and especially after the global financial crisis, the interest of policy makers, managers, academics and, in general, stakeholders. As a multifaceted concept, it cannot exclude the financial and banking institutions as their fundamental role on channeling funds and supporting an efficient resource allocation into the economy. Especially after the recent financial crisis, banks are increasing their attention on socially responsible aspects in order to reinforce trust among stakeholders (Coulson, 2009).

This study investigates the association between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure
and diversity of the board of directors (BoD) in Italian listed companies. Diversity of BoD
in terms of gender diversity, CSR committees, board average, and independent directors are examined
as to their influence on voluntary ESG disclosure. This rating is highly relevant to managers
and investors considering ESG issues in their decision-making process. The factors that

This paper investigates the association between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure and company profitability, as measured by return on assets (ROA). We first assess a method to indexing the ESG score of a large sample of U.S. listed companies based on MSCI ESG KLD STATS data from 2000 to 2016. The statistical model is run on 17,358 observations and studies the association of ROA and the three different dimensions of ESG score. Significant differences between industrial firms and financial intermediaries emerge.

Mainstreaming sustainability into risk management is a fundamental requirement for banks and the focus so far has been on the impact on the value of assets. In this respect, there have been proposals for regulatory incentives within pillar I capital requirements (i.e. the introduction of brown penalising factor or green supporting factor) of a bank, especially in order to include ESG in credit ratings into the regulatory capital framework.

This study aims to construct an original interval-based composite indicator of the gender diversity considering different assumptions on the development of the composite indicator. In this way the composite indicator built can be considered more robust than a classical version of the same indicator. Composite indicators are a very important tool to analyse and evaluate policies and sectors. The problem in using composite indicators is that the results which can be obtained can be dependent to the assumptions given on their construction.