We investigate the relationship between corporate and country sustainability on the cost of bank loans. We look into 470 loan agreements signed between 2005 and 2012 with borrowers based on 28 different countries across the world and operating in all major industries. Our principal findings...

While the relationship between outreach and financial performance (CFP) of microfinance institutions (MFIs) is increasingly well researched, next to nothing is known about the relationship between broader measure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) of MFIs and their CFP. In light of the...

This study explores the underlying drivers of US public pension funds' tendency to tilt their portfolios towards companies with stronger corporate social responsibility (CSR). Studying the equity holdings of large, internally-managed US state pension funds, we find evidence that the political...

This study examines the impact of reputational risk, measured by corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) ratings, on shareholder abnormal returns. Based on 7,368 non-financial companies from 42 countries during 2007-2017, we find that long-short portfolios (buying no reputation risk and selling...

Andrew Rudd's inescapable conclusion that the integration of environment, social or governance (ESG) criteria in investment processes must worsen portfolio diversification appears to be academic wisdom since nearly thirty years, but is it right? We argue that it is wrong. We develop a simple...

We contribute to the research policy literature by pioneering the development of a sufficiently reliable and generically applicable benchmarking approach for research area output quantity and/or quality. In our development, we overcome substantial structural problems such as the ignorance of...