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The wages of social responsibility — where are they? A critical review of ESG investing

Halbritter, Gerhard, Dorfleitner, Gregor·2015·Review of Financial Economics

Abstract

This paper contributes both to investigating the link between the corporate social and financial performance based on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) ratings and to reviewing the existing empirical evidence pertaining to this relationship. The sample used includes ESG data of ASSET4, Bloomberg and KLD for the U.S. market from 1991 to 2012. The econometrical framework applies an ESG portfolio approach using the Carhart (1997) four‐factor model as well as cross‐sectional Fama and MacBeth (1973) regressions. Previous empirical research indicates a relationship between ESG ratings and returns. As against this, the ESG portfolios do not state a significant return difference between companies with high and low ESG ratings. Although the Fama and MacBeth (1973) regressions reveal a significant influence of several ESG variables, investors are hardly able to exploit this relationship. The magnitude and direction of the impact are substantially dependent on the rating provider, the company sample and the particular subperiod. The results suggest that investors should no longer expect abnormal returns by trading a difference portfolio of high and low rated firms with regard to ESG aspects.

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Metadata

Authors
Halbritter, G., & Dorfleitner, G.
Venue
Review of Financial Economics
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2015-04-02
Volume
26
Issue
1
Pages
25-35
ISSN
  • 1058-3300 (ISSN-L)
  • 1873-5924
OpenAlex
W1993612039
Cited by
586
References
8
FWCI
24.33
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The wages of social responsibility — where are they? A critical review of ESG investing. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.rfe.2015.03.004
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Halbritter, G., & Dorfleitner, G. (2015). The wages of social responsibility — where are they? A critical review of ESG investing. Review of Financial Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rfe.2015.03.004

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.