IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finsta/v71y2024ics1572308924000172.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Over with carbon? Investors’ reaction to the Paris Agreement and the US withdrawal

Author

Listed:
  • Alessi, Lucia
  • Battiston, Stefano
  • Kvedaras, Virmantas

Abstract

How financial investors may react to policy events related to sustainability and climate change mitigation in particular, is a key question with implications for sustainable finance and financial stability. We address this question by carrying out a multi-period difference-in-difference approach on a confidential database of securities holdings of the European Central Bank, and we provide evidence of several effects related to the Paris Agreement. In aggregate, investors reduced their participation in the equities of high-carbon firms in response to the agreement, and the trend reverted after the US’s announcement of withdrawal from the agreement. However, the reaction varies across categories and geographies of the securities holders, their ownership size, and the emissions of owned firms. In particular, transition risk has been taken up by less regulated financial institutions and the BRIC countries. Our results highlight that the redirection of global financial flows towards climate action requires clear and unanimous signals from the global community of policy makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessi, Lucia & Battiston, Stefano & Kvedaras, Virmantas, 2024. "Over with carbon? Investors’ reaction to the Paris Agreement and the US withdrawal," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finsta:v:71:y:2024:i:c:s1572308924000172
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101232
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1572308924000172
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101232?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clément de Chaisemartin & Xavier D'Haultfœuille, 2020. "Two-Way Fixed Effects Estimators with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(9), pages 2964-2996, September.
    2. Monasterolo, Irene & de Angelis, Luca, 2020. "Blind to carbon risk? An analysis of stock market reaction to the Paris Agreement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. Baiardi, Donatella & Morana, Claudio, 2021. "Climate change awareness: Empirical evidence for the European Union," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    4. Iacus, Stefano & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2009. "cem: Software for Coarsened Exact Matching," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 30(i09).
    5. Dunz, Nepomuk & Naqvi, Asjad & Monasterolo, Irene, 2021. "Climate sentiments, transition risk, and financial stability in a stock-flow consistent model," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    6. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Zhao, Jun, 2020. "Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 101-122.
    7. Iacus, Stefano M. & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2011. "Multivariate Matching Methods That Are Monotonic Imbalance Bounding," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 106(493), pages 345-361.
    8. Xu, Yiqing, 2017. "Generalized Synthetic Control Method: Causal Inference with Interactive Fixed Effects Models," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(1), pages 57-76, January.
    9. Iacus, Stefano M. & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2019. "A Theory of Statistical Inference for Matching Methods in Causal Research," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(1), pages 46-68, January.
    10. Stefano Battiston & Antoine Mandel & Irene Monasterolo & Franziska Schütze & Gabriele Visentin, 2017. "A climate stress-test of the financial system," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 7(4), pages 283-288, April.
    11. Alexis Diamond & Jasjeet S. Sekhon, 2013. "Genetic Matching for Estimating Causal Effects: A General Multivariate Matching Method for Achieving Balance in Observational Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(3), pages 932-945, July.
    12. Sekhon, Jasjeet S., 2011. "Multivariate and Propensity Score Matching Software with Automated Balance Optimization: The Matching package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 42(i07).
    13. Serena Fatica & Roberto Panzica, 2021. "Green bonds as a tool against climate change?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5), pages 2688-2701, July.
    14. Zsolt Darvas & Dirk Schoenmaker, 2017. "Institutional investors and home bias in Europe’s Capital Markets Union," Working Papers 19360, Bruegel.
    15. Berg, Tobias & Reisinger, Markus & Streitz, Daniel, 2021. "Spillover effects in empirical corporate finance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1109-1127.
    16. Boermans, Martijn A. & Galema, Rients, 2019. "Are pension funds actively decarbonizing their portfolios?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 50-60.
    17. Lukas Benz & Andrea Jacob & Stefan Paulus & Marco Wilkens, 2020. "Herds on green meadows: the decarbonization of institutional portfolios," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(1), pages 13-31, February.
    18. Callaway, Brantly & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C., 2021. "Difference-in-Differences with multiple time periods," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 200-230.
    19. Jane Ellis & Sara Moarif, 2017. "Enhancing transparency of climate finance under the Paris Agreement: Lessons from experience," OECD/IEA Climate Change Expert Group Papers 2016/3, OECD Publishing.
    20. Iacus, Stefano M. & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2012. "Causal Inference without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-24, January.
    21. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    22. Reghezza, Alessio & Altunbas, Yener & Marques-Ibanez, David & Rodriguez d’Acri, Costanza & Spaggiari, Martina, 2022. "Do banks fuel climate change?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    23. Allevi, E. & Basso, A. & Bonenti, F. & Oggioni, G. & Riccardi, R., 2019. "Measuring the environmental performance of green SRI funds: A DEA approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 32-44.
    24. Ho, Daniel & Imai, Kosuke & King, Gary & Stuart, Elizabeth A., 2011. "MatchIt: Nonparametric Preprocessing for Parametric Causal Inference," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 42(i08).
    25. Ramelli, Stefano & Ossola, Elisa & Rancan, Michela, 2020. "Climate Sin Stocks: Stock Price Reactions to Global Climate Strikes," JRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2020-03, Joint Research Centre, European Commission.
    26. Alessi, Lucia & Ossola, Elisa & Panzica, Roberto, 2021. "What greenium matters in the stock market? The role of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental disclosures," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alessi, Lucia & Battiston, Stefano & Kvedaras, Virmantas, 2021. "Over with carbon? Investors' reaction to the Paris Agreement and the US withdrawal," JRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2021-12, Joint Research Centre, European Commission.
    2. Hans-Bernd Schaefer & Rok Spruk, 2024. "Islamic Law, Western European Law and the Roots of Middle East's Long Divergence: a Comparative Empirical Investigation (800-1600)," Papers 2401.14435, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.
    3. Callaway, Brantly & Karami, Sonia, 2023. "Treatment effects in interactive fixed effects models with a small number of time periods," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 233(1), pages 184-208.
    4. van Rijn, Jordan, 2024. "The effects of membership expansion on credit union risk and returns," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    5. Rafaty, R. & Dolphin, G. & Pretis, F., 2020. "Carbon pricing and the elasticity of CO2 emissions," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 20116, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    6. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Guido Imbens, 2023. "Causal Models for Longitudinal and Panel Data: A Survey," Papers 2311.15458, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    7. Roth, Jonathan & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Bilinski, Alyssa & Poe, John, 2023. "What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2218-2244.
    8. Popescu, Ioana-Stefania & Gibon, Thomas & Hitaj, Claudia & Rubin, Mirco & Benetto, Enrico, 2023. "Are SRI funds financing carbon emissions? An input-output life cycle assessment of investment funds," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    9. Gatterer, Markus & Leonhardt, Heidi & Salhofer, Klaus & Morawetz, Ulrich, 2024. "The legacy of partible inheritance on farmland fragmentation: Evidence from Austria," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    10. Goodman-Bacon, Andrew, 2021. "Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 254-277.
    11. Elena Kotyrlo & Hryhorii M. Kalachyhin, 2023. "The effects of India's bilateral investment treaties termination on foreign direct investment inflows," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(4), pages 1007-1033, October.
    12. Riccardo D'Alberto & Francesco Pagliacci & Matteo Zavalloni, 2023. "A socioeconomic impact assessment of three Italian national parks," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 114-147, January.
    13. Kotsogiannis, Christos & Salvadori, Luca & Karangwa, John & Mukamana, Theonille, 2024. "Do tax audits have a dynamic impact? Evidence from corporate income tax administrative data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    14. Wei Chen & Zaiyan Wei & Karen Xie, 2022. "The Battle for Homes: How Does Home Sharing Disrupt Local Residential Markets?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(12), pages 8589-8612, December.
    15. Kyunghoon Ban & D'esir'e K'edagni, 2022. "Robust Difference-in-differences Models," Papers 2211.06710, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    16. Md Saiful Islam & Md Sarowar Morshed & Gary J Young & Md Noor-E-Alam, 2019. "Robust policy evaluation from large-scale observational studies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(10), pages 1-19, October.
    17. Joakim Weill, 2023. "Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information," Working Papers 2023.10, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    18. Zhang, Chi & Managi, Shunsuke, 2020. "Functional social support and maternal stress: A study on the 2017 paid parental leave reform in Japan," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 153-172.
    19. Stephen McCarthy & Damien Sheehan‐Connor, 2022. "The effect of hospital‐physician integration on hospital costs," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(11), pages 2333-2368, November.
    20. Joakim A. Weill, 2023. "Flood Risk Mapping and the Distributional Impacts of Climate Information," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-066, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finsta:v:71:y:2024:i:c:s1572308924000172. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jfstabil .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.