Both borrowers and lenders can be socially responsible (SR). Ethical banks commit to financing only ethical projects, which have social profitability but lower expected revenues than standard projects. Instead, no credible commitment exists for SR borrowers. The matching between SR borrowers and...

High-quality firms sometimes under-invest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) compared to lower quality firms. We show that information asymmetry in product quality could explain this behavior. Specifically, in a monopoly with information asymmetry, if only a small fraction of consumers is...

Socially responsible divestment reduces aggregate sustainable performance when investors use Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings. Due to information asymmetries, socially responsible investors shift their portfolios towards firms with high ESG ratings rather than firms with...

We present a model of ESG integration where borrowers can deviate from ESG promises ex-post. Borrowers are incentivized to pursue ESG projects only when lenders can charge a high borrowing rate, which decreases the borrowers’ private benefit from pursuing financial returns. In the presence of...