El Khoury Rim, Nasrallah Nohade, Harb Etienne, Hussainey Khaled
Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Notre Dame University-Louaize, Lebanon.
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Le Cnam, Paris, France.
J Clean Prod. 2022 Jun 20;354:131693. doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131693. Epub 2022 Apr 15.
An uphill question of whether Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) directly impact firms' financial performance (FP) continues to vacillate between two opponent streams. In the present study, we argue that COVID-19 is an extreme event where the effect of ESG sharply manifests. We rely on cross-sectional data in the context of G20 countries for the year 2020. To avoid biased results due to governments support, we integrate four novel metrics provided by the Oxford Coronavirus Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT). We run sequential regressions (OLS; and quartiles to account for the Ingrained Income Bias (IIB) and ESG scores). We also perform robustness tests and account for the interaction between ESG and cash level. Our models were subsequently replicated for each ESG pillar. Findings indicate that ESG is beneficial during COVID-19, but the reward appears to be closely tied up to specific aspects of ESG, income level, and firm-specific variables. Results contribute to the burgeoning literature on ESG during COVID-19 by reflecting on firms' key attributes and the preponderance of government support.
环境、社会和治理（ESG）是否直接影响公司财务绩效（FP）这一尚待解决的问题，在两种对立观点之间持续摇摆。在本研究中，我们认为新冠疫情是一个极端事件，ESG的影响在其中急剧显现。我们依赖2020年二十国集团（G20）国家背景下的横截面数据。为避免因政府支持导致的结果偏差，我们整合了牛津大学新冠病毒政府应对跟踪器（OxCGRT）提供的四个新指标。我们进行了序列回归（普通最小二乘法；以及四分位数回归以考虑固有收入偏差（IIB）和ESG得分）。我们还进行了稳健性检验，并考虑了ESG与现金水平之间的相互作用。随后，我们针对每个ESG支柱对模型进行了复制。研究结果表明，在新冠疫情期间，ESG是有益的，但回报似乎与ESG的特定方面、收入水平和公司特定变量密切相关。通过反思公司的关键属性和政府支持的优势，研究结果为新冠疫情期间关于ESG的新兴文献做出了贡献。
