We exploit a modification to Sustainalytics' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating methodology, which is subsequently adopted by Morningstar, to study whether ESG ratings are salient for stock pricing. We show that the inversion of the rating scale but not new information leads some...

We exploit a modification to Sustainalytics' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating methodology, which is subsequently adopted by Morningstar, to study whether ESG ratings are salient for stock pricing. We show that the inversion of the rating scale but not new information leads some...

This paper studies the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings on investors' preferences and stock prices. We exploit a change in ESG rating methodology that non-linearly shifted ESG ratings for firms as a natural experiment. We show that the 'pseudo'-changes in the ESG...

Most of the performance measures proposed in the financial and academic literature are subject to be gamed in an active management framework (Goetzmann et al., 2007). One of the main reasons of this drawback is due to an incomplete characterization by these measures of studied return...

This paper investigates the impact of a financial turmoil on the performances of traditional, and naive, asset allocation strategies. We compare over a long time span (lasting for the last 60 years) the 1/N portfolio with mean-variance optimal portfolio strategies. Our analyses consider several...

We analyze the ESG rating criteria used by prominent agencies and show that there is a lack of a commonality in the definition of ESG (i) characteristics, (ii) attributes and (iii) standards in defining E, S and G components. We provide evidence that heterogeneity in rating criteria can lead...

The present paper proposes an overview of the existing literature covering several aspects related to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. Specifically, we consider studies describing and evaluating ESG methodologies and those studying the impact of ESG on credit risk, debt and...

In this study, we unpack the ESG ratings of four prominent agencies in Europe and find that (i) each single E, S, G pillar explains the overall ESG score differently, (ii) there is a low co-movement between the three E, S, G pillars and (iii) there are specific ESG Key Performance Indicators...

We address the issue of the efficiency of household portfolios in the presence of housing risk. We treat housing stock as an asset and rents as a stochastic liability stream: over the life-cycle, households can be short or long in their net housing position. Efficient financial portfolios are...

In this paper we argue that standard tests of portfolio efficiency are biased because they neglect the existence of illiquid wealth. In the case of household portfolios, the most important illiquid asset is housing: if housing stock adjustments are costly and therefore infrequent, we show how...