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When do investors go green? Evidence from a time-varying asset-pricing model

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This paper studies the evolution of the greenium, i.e. a risk premium linked to firms' greenness and environmental transparency, based on individual stock returns. We estimate an asset pricing model with time-varying risk premia, where the greenium is associated to a priced `greenness and transparency' factor, which considers both companies' greenhouse gas emissions and the quality of their environmental disclosures. We show that investors in the European equity market tend to accept lower returns, ceteris paribus, to hold greener and more transparent assets when the shift of the economy towards low-carbon becomes more credible. This happened after the Paris Agreement, the first Global Climate Strike and the announcement of the EU Green Deal. Signals going in the opposite direction, such as the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, increasing fossil fuel prices and more bad news about climate change, are associated with increases in the greenium.

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  • Alessi, Lucia & Elisa, Ossola & Panzica, Roberto, 2021. "When do investors go green? Evidence from a time-varying asset-pricing model," JRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2021-13, Joint Research Centre, European Commission.
  • Handle: RePEc:jrs:wpaper:202113
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    Cited by:

    1. Alessi, Lucia & Battiston, Stefano, 2021. "Two sides of the same coin: Green Taxonomy alignment versus transition risk in financial portfolios," JRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2021-14, Joint Research Centre, European Commission.
    2. 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.
    3. Alessi, Lucia & Battiston, Stefano, 2022. "Two sides of the same coin: Green Taxonomy alignment versus transition risk in financial portfolios," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    climate risk; environmental disclosure; conditional factor models; asset pricing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development

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