题目:The New Governance Role of Corporate Boards: Sustainability Committees
时间：2024年12月23日（周一）10:00-11:30
地点：浙江大学紫金港校区管理学院A423
主讲人：沈建峰，新南威尔士大学商学院副教授
主持人：吴依，浙江大学管理学院百人计划研究员
主讲人简介：
Jianfeng Shen is an associate professor of finance at the UNSW Business School. His research expertise is in the empirical asset pricing and sustainable finance areas. One common theme in his research is how various market participants process different types of information, interact with each other, and consequently affect the formation of asset prices. His work covers topics including the time-series and cross-sectional patterns in asset returns, the behaviors and roles in capital markets of financial intermediaries (e.g., analysts, delegated asset managers, and news media), and sustainable finance practices. He received BA in Economics from Zhejiang University and PhD in Finance from National University of Singapore.
摘要：
With hand-collected information on board sustainability committees for the S&P1500 companies, this paper investigates both drivers and effects of firms’ decisions to establish the committee from the perspective of investor demand for corporate sustainability. We find that firms under pressure to attract institutional investors and enhance environmental and social (ES) reputation are more likely to establish a sustainability committee at the board level. Using a difference-in-difference event study approach, we find that firms experience an increased equity ownership by socially responsible institutional investors and a decline in ES-related shareholder proposals after adopting a sustainability committee, relative to non-adopting firms matched on the ex-ante adoption propensity. The shareholder responses in adopters can be ascribed to elevated ES reputation and reduced ES risk after adopting the committee. Finally, we find evidence for a lower cost of equity capital for firms with a sustainability committee than those without. Overall our findings indicate that the presence of a sustainability committee serves to reconcile shareholder interests and stakeholder claims on corporate sustainability.
