IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinin/v52y2022ics104295732200047x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What do we learn from ratings about corporate social responsibility? New evidence of uninformative ratings

Author

Listed:
  • Yang, Ruoke

Abstract

The rise of investments professionally managed with a socially responsible mandate has generated growing interest in environmental and social ratings. However, it is not clear how informative these ratings are or whether they are distorted by greenwashing. Based on the ratings of the leading provider, I offer the first evidence linking greenwashing to ratings inflation. Better ratings do not predict less future corporate bad behavior. This is of concern because it undermines the signaling value of these ratings. To understand these results, I develop a model where the rating agency may underinvest in greenwashing detection while firms have incentives to window dress and engage in greenwashing. Finally, controlling for greenwashing improves ratings predictive quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang, Ruoke, 2022. "What do we learn from ratings about corporate social responsibility? New evidence of uninformative ratings," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinin:v:52:y:2022:i:c:s104295732200047x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jfi.2022.100994
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104295732200047X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jfi.2022.100994?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. David F. Larcker & Anastasia A. Zakolyukina, 2012. "Detecting Deceptive Discussions in Conference Calls," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 495-540, May.
    2. Hao Liang & Luc Renneboog, 2017. "On the Foundations of Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(2), pages 853-910, April.
    3. Malcolm Baker & Daniel Bergstresser & George Serafeim & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2018. "Financing the Response to Climate Change: The Pricing and Ownership of U.S. Green Bonds," NBER Working Papers 25194, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Benston, George J & Smith, Clifford W, Jr, 1976. "A Transactions Cost Approach to the Theory of Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 215-231, May.
    5. Heinkel, Robert & Kraus, Alan & Zechner, Josef, 2001. "The Effect of Green Investment on Corporate Behavior," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 431-449, December.
    6. Arno Riedl & Paul Smeets, 2017. "Why Do Investors Hold Socially Responsible Mutual Funds?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(6), pages 2505-2550, December.
    7. Skreta, Vasiliki & Veldkamp, Laura, 2009. "Ratings shopping and asset complexity: A theory of ratings inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 678-695, July.
    8. Patrick Bolton & Xavier Freixas & Joel Shapiro, 2012. "The Credit Ratings Game," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 85-112, February.
    9. David P. Baron, 2007. "Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 683-717, September.
    10. Deng, Xin & Kang, Jun-koo & Low, Buen Sin, 2013. "Corporate social responsibility and stakeholder value maximization: Evidence from mergers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 87-109.
    11. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    12. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2007. "Disagreement, tastes, and asset prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(3), pages 667-689, March.
    13. El Ghoul, Sadok & Guedhami, Omrane & Kwok, Chuck C.Y. & Mishra, Dev R., 2011. "Does corporate social responsibility affect the cost of capital?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 2388-2406, September.
    14. Hart, Oliver & Zingales, Luigi, 2017. "Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value," Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting, now publishers, vol. 2(2), pages 247-275, November.
    15. Di Giuli, Alberta & Kostovetsky, Leonard, 2014. "Are red or blue companies more likely to go green? Politics and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 158-180.
    16. Rob Bauer & Tobias Ruof & Paul Smeets & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2021. "Get Real! Individuals Prefer More Sustainable Investments [Explaining the discrepancy between intentions and actions: The case of hypothetical gap in contingent valuation]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(8), pages 3976-4043.
    17. Daines, Robert M. & Gow, Ian D. & Larcker, David F., 2010. "Rating the ratings: How good are commercial governance ratings?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 439-461, December.
    18. Hong, Harrison & Kacperczyk, Marcin, 2009. "The price of sin: The effects of social norms on markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 15-36, July.
    19. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    20. Novy-Marx, Robert, 2013. "The other side of value: The gross profitability premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-28.
    21. Hart, Oliver D. & Zingales, Luigi, 2017. "Companies Should Maximize Shareholder Welfare Not Market Value," Working Papers 267, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    22. Leland, Hayne E & Pyle, David H, 1977. "Informational Asymmetries, Financial Structure, and Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 371-387, May.
    23. Sudheer Chava, 2014. "Environmental Externalities and Cost of Capital," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(9), pages 2223-2247, September.
    24. Michael Magill & Martine Quinzii & Jean‐Charles Rochet, 2015. "A Theory of the Stakeholder Corporation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83(5), pages 1685-1725, September.
    25. Opp, Christian C. & Opp, Marcus M. & Harris, Milton, 2013. "Rating agencies in the face of regulation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 46-61.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jin, Yurong & Yan, Jingzhou & Yan, Qianhui, 2024. "Unraveling ESG Ambiguity, Price Reaction, and Trading Volume," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    2. Leonardo Gambacorta & Salvatore Polizzi & Alessio Reghezza & Enzo Scannella, 2023. "Do banks practice what they preach? Brown lending and environmental disclosure in the euro area," BIS Working Papers 1143, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Li, Hao & Guo, Hui & Hao, Xinyao & Zhang, Xuan, 2023. "The ESG rating, spillover of ESG ratings, and stock return: Evidence from Chinese listed firms," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).

    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. Gillan, Stuart L. & Koch, Andrew & Starks, Laura T., 2021. "Firms and social responsibility: A review of ESG and CSR research in corporate finance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    2. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2021. "Sustainable investing in equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 550-571.
    3. Liu, Xianda & Hou, Wenxuan & Main, Brian G.M., 2022. "Anti-market sentiment and corporate social responsibility: Evidence from anti-Jewish pogroms," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    4. Steven D. Baker & Burton Hollifield & Emilio Osambela, 2022. "Asset Prices and Portfolios with Externalities [Pricedetermination in the EU ETS market: theory and econometric analysis with market fundamentals]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1433-1468.
    5. Hans B. Christensen & Luzi Hail & Christian Leuz, 2021. "Mandatory CSR and sustainability reporting: economic analysis and literature review," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 1176-1248, September.
    6. 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.
    7. Sirio Aramonte & Frank Packer, 2022. "Information governance in sustainable finance," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 132.
    8. Huang, Chenchen & Luo, Di & Mukherjee, Soumyatanu & Mishra, Tapas, 2022. "To Acquire or to Ally? Managing Partners’ Environmental Risk in International Expansion," MPRA Paper 117591, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 07 Jan 2023.
    9. Moisson, Paul-Henri, 2024. "Social Responsibility, Consequentialism and Public Policy," TSE Working Papers 24-1521, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    10. Shackleton, Mark & Yan, Jiali & Yao, Yaqiong, 2022. "What drives a firm's ES performance? Evidence from stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    11. Fatica, Serena & Panzica, Roberto & Rancan, Michela, 2021. "The pricing of green bonds: Are financial institutions special?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    12. Sadok El Ghoul & Omrane Guedhami & Hakkon Kim & Kwangwoo Park, 2018. "Corporate Environmental Responsibility and the Cost of Capital: International Evidence," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 335-361, May.
    13. Benjamin Lynch & Martha O'Hagan‐Luff, 2024. "Relative corporate social performance and cost of equity capital: International evidence," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 2882-2910, July.
    14. Shih, Yi-Cheng & Wang, Yao & Zhong, Rui & Ma, Yi-Ming, 2021. "Corporate environmental responsibility and default risk: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    15. Kabderian Dreyer, Johannes & Sharma, Vivek & Smith, William, 2023. "Warm-glow investment and the underperformance of green stocks," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 546-570.
    16. Bing Yu & Shengxiong Wu & Mary Jane Lenard, 2022. "Do Ethical Companies Have High Stock Prices or High Returns?," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-15, February.
    17. Marshall, Andrew & Rao, Sandeep & Roy, Partha P. & Thapa, Chandra, 2022. "Mandatory corporate social responsibility and foreign institutional investor preferences," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    18. Pedersen, Lasse Heje & Fitzgibbons, Shaun & Pomorski, Lukasz, 2021. "Responsible investing: The ESG-efficient frontier," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 572-597.
    19. Po‐Hsuan Hsu & Kai Li & Chi‐Yang Tsou, 2023. "The Pollution Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1343-1392, June.
    20. Opp, Marcus & Oehmke, Martin, 2020. "A theory of socially responsible investment," CEPR Discussion Papers 14351, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rating agency; Corporate social responsibility; Socially responsible investing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:jfinin:v:52:y:2022:i:c:s104295732200047x. 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/inca/622875 .

    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.