Motivated by the growing attention on climate change and the ethical role that board characteristics and ownership may play in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, this paper investigates the ...relationship between institutional ownership and GHG emissions. Using an extensive dataset from the UK and the USA, we show that institutional ownership is associated with less GHG emissions – a one standard deviation increase in the proportion of institutional ownership reduces carbon emissions by 1.02 metric tons. Our findings are robust when using alternative measures, econometric specifications and several approaches to address endogeneity. Further, we find no evidence for a stronger effect in the UK compared with the USA, as expected from our discussion of the governance contexts in the two countries. We also test the possible channel (i.e. exit and selection) through which institutional investors affect GHG emissions. In a set of additional analyses, we show that litigation risk and board gender diversity moderate the relationship between institutional ownership and GHG emissions. Finally, we also document a positive effect of the stewardship codes on the relationship between institutional ownership and GHG emissions. Our findings make significant theoretical and regulatory contributions.
Abstract
Through a survey and analyses of observational data, we provide systematic evidence that institutional investors value and demand climate risk disclosures. The survey reveals the investors ...have a strong demand for climate risk disclosures, and many actively engage their portfolio firms for improvements. Empirical analyses of holdings data corroborate this evidence by showing a significantly positive association between climate-conscious institutional ownership and better firm-level climate risk disclosure. We establish further evidence of institutional investors’ influence on firms’ climate risk disclosures by examining a shock to the climate risk disclosure demand of French institutional investors (French Article 173).
Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.
We study the local effects of new market-rate housing in low-income areas using microdata on large apartment buildings, rents, and migration. New buildings decrease rents in nearby units by about 6% ...relative to units slightly farther away or near sites developed later, and they increase in-migration from low-income areas. We show that new buildings absorb many high-income households and increase the local housing stock substantially. If buildings improve nearby amenities, the effect is not large enough to increase rents. Amenity improvements could be limited because most buildings go into already-changing neighborhoods or buildings could create disamenities such as congestion.
When crises such as disease outbreaks occur in low-income countries, the global response can influence the output of researchers in the most affected locations. This paper investigates the impact of ...the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic on publication outcomes of endemic country scientists. Driven by collaborations with high-income country scientists in Ebola publications, endemic country scientists with relevant experience increase their publication output. However, the productivity of scientists without relevant experience falls, driving a reduction in non-Ebola publications. Any benefits arising from increased visibility during the epidemic does not appear to spill over to non-Ebola or Africa-led research in the long run.
We show how to use commuting flows to infer the spatial distribution of income within a city. A simple workplace choice model predicts a gravity equation for commuting flows whose destination fixed ...effects correspond to wages. We implement this method with cell phone transaction data from Dhaka and Colombo. Model-predicted income predicts separate income data, at the workplace and residential level, and by skill group. Unlike machine learning approaches, our method does not require training data, yet it achieves comparable predictive power. We show that hartals (transportation strikes) in Dhaka reduce commuting more for high model-predicted wage and high skill commuters.
This study analyses whether the decision to work while sick can be linked to workload fluctuations. Drawing on data collected from professional football, we exploit the dynamics of a season and use ...additional (national and international) cup games conducted in the second half of a season as a source of exogenous variation. We find robust evidence that players are 6.3 percentage points more likely to return from injuries earlier than expected when their teams are exposed to a high workload. The effect is driven by players who are more important to their teams and those who are less vulnerable to injuries. Finally, we find that presenteeism comes at the cost of an early comeback significantly shortening the time until the next injury by approximately 16 days.
Since the waves of financial liberalization in the 1980s, emerging market economies have been accessible to foreign investors. Altogether, they contributed up to 43.8% of the global GDP in 2018, and ...many of them, such as China, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam from 2010 to 2019, are among the fastest-growing economies in the world. Given the high economic growth, the assets issued by companies in emerging markets are viewed as a new set of investment opportunities for global investors and fund managers who seek to improve the risk-adjusted performance of their portfolios. In addition to their risky profile due to the lack of transparency as well as stable and matured institutions, their recent development path faces a number of challenges arising not only from the slow pace of economic reforms but also from their increased integration with the world. Geopolitical risks, the US–China trade wars, and rising policy uncertainty around the world are expected to reduce their growth potential and performance. This Special Issue dedicates special attention to the current dynamics of emerging financial markets, as well as their perspectives of development as a key driver for sustainable firms and economies. Accordingly, the focus is particularly placed on market integration and interdependence, valuations and risk management practices, and the financing means for inclusive growth.
This paper examines whether economic uncertainty increases executive turnover. The negative perception perspective and business change theory suggest that executives are more likely to leave their ...jobs during periods of corporate distress. However, the additive effects of internal and external risk are thought to prompt firms to carefully consider executive turnover, thereby reducing the likelihood of executive changes. Based on the literature, we propose a check-and-balance hypothesis for the relationship between external uncertainty and executive change, according to which the optimal superposition of the internal and external risks stemming from increased external uncertainty would be to avoid a wave of executive departures. Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 and the China economic policy uncertainty index of Baker et al. (2013), we examine the impact of economic policy uncertainty on executive turnover and our results support the check-and-balance hypothesis. Our findings enhance our understanding of how economic policy uncertainty affects executive turnover, and enrich the literature on corporate risk management and strategic management.
This paper examines whether technological innovations such as information and communication technology infrastructure, mobile phone subscriptions, secure internet servers and the number of automated ...teller machines and bank branches increased financial deepening in 43 African countries for the period 2010–2019. The study employs panel corrected standard errors, fixed effects and quantile regressions for empirical analysis. The results show that technological innovations have a positive and significant influence on financial deepening in Africa in terms of banks’ mobilisation of deposits and allocation of credit to enterprises. Furthermore, the technological indicators have a strong and positive effect on higher levels of bank credit to the private sector than lower levels. As for bank deposits, only the number of branches was found to have significant and positive effects at a high level of bank deposits compared with a low level. These results imply that African governments and development partners can leverage ICT developments to increase financial deepening and reinvigorate debt financing, which is the primary funding source for small and medium‐size enterprises.
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