ESG is emerging as a new benchmark for measuring a company's sustainable development capabilities and social impact. As a measure of ESG performance, ESG ratings are increasingly receiving attention from companies, the general public, and government institutions, and are becoming an important reference factor influencing their decision-making. This paper investigates the impact of corporate ESG ratings on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and its mechanisms of action. Focusing on listed companies in China, we find that higher ESG ratings contribute to improving a company's TFP, and this conclusion remains valid after robustness tests and addressing endogeneity issues. Further exploration into the reasons behind this result reveals that ESG ratings can be seen as a signal that a company sends to the outside world, representing its overall performance. Higher ESG ratings enhance a company's TFP by reducing market financing constraints and obtaining government subsidies. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive impact of ESG ratings on TFP is more pronounced for companies with higher levels of attention, reputation, and audit quality. Additionally, we explore whether ESG ratings can serve as a predictive indicator for measuring a company's TFP. This hypothesis was tested using machine learning algorithms, and the results indicate that models incorporating ESG rating indicators significantly improve the accuracy of predicting a company's TFP capabilities.

This paper examines the impact of ESG rating divergence on stock price delays in the context of the Chinese capital market. We find that ESG rating divergence significantly increases the stock price delays. Mechanism analysis results suggest that ESG rating divergence affects stock price delays by reducing information transparency and firm internal control quality. Heterogeneous analysis results indicate that the impact of ESG rating divergence on stock price delays is more pronounced in high-tech firms and when investor sentiment is high.

There is substantial evidence indicating that enterprises are negatively impacted by climate risk, with the most direct effects typically occurring in financial domains. This study examines A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2023, employing text analysis to develop the firm-level climate risk indicator and investigate the influence on corporate financial risk. The results show a significant positive correlation between climate risk and financial risk at the firm level. Mechanism analysis shows that the negative impact of climate risk on corporate financial condition is mainly achieved through three paths: increasing financial constraints, reducing inventory reserves, and increasing the degree of maturity mismatch. To address potential endogeneity, this study applies instrumental variable tests, propensity score matching, and a quasi-natural experiment based on the Paris Agreement. Additional tests indicate that reducing the degree of information asymmetry and improving corporate ESG performance can alleviate the negative impact of climate risk on corporate financial conditions. This relationship is more pronounced in high-carbon emission industries. In conclusion, this research deepens the understanding of the link between climate risk and corporate financial risk, providing a new micro perspective for risk management, proactive governance transformation, and the mitigation of financial challenges faced by enterprises.

We study how financial markets integrate news about pollution abatement costs into firm values. Using China’s automation of pollution monitoring, we find that firms with factories in bad-news cities---cities that used to report much lower pollution than the automated reading---see significant declines in stock prices. This is consistent with the view that investors expect firms in high-pollution cities to pay significant adjustment and abatement costs to become “greener.” However, the efficiency with which such information is incorporated into prices varies widely---while the market reaction is quick in the Hong Kong stock market, it is considerably delayed in the mainland ones, resulting in a drift. The equity markets expect most of these abatement costs to be paid by private firms and not by state-owned enterprises, and by brown firms and not by green firms.

We evaluate the impact of digital finance on the ESG performance of manufacturing enterprises and whether digital and traditional finance play a complementary or substitute role in promoting the ESG performance. First, we find that developing digital finance can alleviate financing constraints and promote technological innovation, thereby increasing enterprises' investment in environmental, social, and governance, providing sufficient technical support, and improving their ESG performance. Furthermore, digital finance and traditional finance have a direct impact on the ESG performance and further enhance their influence through complementary effects. Therefore, this paper may provide a valuable reference for finance to support manufacturing enterprises' development effectively.

The study indicates that under conditions of financial repression, a enterprise’s ESG performance significantly impacts the extent of its short-term debt used for long-term purposes. The mechanism test reveals that ESG performance mitigates the degree of short-term debt for long-term use through three pathways: enhancing information transparency, alleviating financing constraints, and curbing excessive investment. Further research suggests that the influence of ESG performance on the use of short-term debt for long-term purposes is more pronounced among private enterprises, high-pollution and high-energy-consuming enterprises, and enterprises in underdeveloped regions. This paper enriches the research on the relationship between ESG performance and corporate financing decisions.

This paper investigates whether Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance influences the stock idiosyncratic risk and extreme risk. We find that the ESG performance of listed companies significantly reduces the stock idiosyncratic risk and extreme risk. Furthermore, we identify that this mitigating effect is shaped by the nature of enterprise ownership and the firm life cycle. Through additional mechanistic analysis, we confirm that ESG performance affects the stock price volatility risk of listed companies by reducing levels of corporate earnings management and bolstering corporate reputation, thereby alleviating both idiosyncratic risk and extreme risk in stock prices.

气候信息披露对于实现“双碳”目标，促进供应链可持续发展至关重要。本文通过合并中国上市公司和海关数据，基于各国强制性ESG披露政策的自然实验，考察其对中国出口供应商企业气候信息披露的影响。研究发现，出口目的国强制性ESG披露政策对中国出口供应商企业气候信息披露具有增进效应，供应商企业的主动模仿和客户倒逼是重要的实现机制。异质性检验发现，当中国出口供应商为污染型企业、面临较高的外部环境关注度，及目的国强制性ESG披露政策执行更为严格时，政策效果更为显著。进一步分析发现，中国出口供应商企业气候信息披露的完善不仅有助于增加企业对实行强制性ESG披露政策国家的出口，而且能够提升供应商企业未来的经营绩效。本文丰富了气候信息披露影响因素与实现机制的研究，增强了对强制性ESG披露政策的理解，对构建可持续供应链和提升企业国际竞争力具有重要启示。

2019年，国家发布《绿色产业指导目录》，首次明确绿色产业范围和技术标准，旨在为包括绿色金融体系在内经济社会绿色转型中一系列制度安排的重点支持方向提供技术上的参考目录，提高资源配置效率。本文以《目录》提供的技术文本为基础、运用前沿的大语言模型，构建了全新的基于专业技术角度的企业绿色技术指标，避免了传统企业环境效益评价指标（如ESG指标）存在的覆盖不足和漂绿高估问题。以该指标为基础，本文运用双重差分法考察《目录》对企业创新能力、投资行为及经营绩效的影响。实证结果表明，《目录》的颁布鼓励企业加大了研发投入、增加了绿色支出，提升了绿色企业的创新能力，尤其促进了企业的高质量创新产出。进一步地融资机制探索表明，明确绿色标准显著降低了相关企业的融资成本，尤其对企业信贷融资渠道的影响更为显著。最后，本文通过经济意义分析发现，《目录》提高了企业的经营绩效和节能减排。本文的研究结论为进一步健全绿色金融机制、实现绿色可持续发展提供了有益参考。

This paper proposes the concepts of ESG information flows and a predictable framework of ESG flows based on AR process, and studies how ESG information flows are incorporated into and affect a dynamic portfolio with transaction costs. Two methods, called the ESG factor model and the ESG preference model, are considered to embed ESG information flows into a dynamic mean-variance model. The dynamic optimal portfolio can be expressed as a traditional optimal portfolio without ESG information and a dynamic ESG preference portfolio, and the impact of ESG information on optimal trading is explicitly analyzed. The rich numerical results show that ESG information can improve the out-of-sample performance, and ESG preference portfolio has the best out-of-sample performance including the net returns, Sharpe ratio and cumulative return of portfolios, and contribute to reducing risk and transaction costs. Our dynamic trading strategy provides valuable insights for sustainable investment both in theory and practice.