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Climate Change Coverage and the Performance of Green and Brown Equities

Flygare, Anton LU and Tingets, Fredrik LU (2023) NEKP01 20231
Department of Economics
Abstract
Climate change has emerged as one of the world’s most pressing issues, a development that has prompted investors to shift their focus accordingly, catalysing a significant increase in green investments. This study is set against this backdrop, focusing on the performance of portfolios of European firms classified as low or high emission intensity – green or brown respectively – during an eight-year period, from January 2010 to June 2018. Furthermore, we aim to explain the difference in performance using media coverage of climate change. We also conduct a panel data analysis to investigate the difference in individual firms reaction to climate change reporting, emissions intensity and the interaction between these terms. We find a... (More)
Climate change has emerged as one of the world’s most pressing issues, a development that has prompted investors to shift their focus accordingly, catalysing a significant increase in green investments. This study is set against this backdrop, focusing on the performance of portfolios of European firms classified as low or high emission intensity – green or brown respectively – during an eight-year period, from January 2010 to June 2018. Furthermore, we aim to explain the difference in performance using media coverage of climate change. We also conduct a panel data analysis to investigate the difference in individual firms reaction to climate change reporting, emissions intensity and the interaction between these terms. We find a significant discrepancy in the performance of green and brown portfolios, and can show that the green portfolio has a significant positive alpha as well as a positive relationship to an increase in climate change concerns. On a firm-level, we also find that firms with higher emissions intensity outperforms when there’s no news reporting about climate change and that firms with higher emissions intensity react worse than their low counterpart when there’s an increase in climate change news reporting. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Flygare, Anton LU and Tingets, Fredrik LU
supervisor
organization
course
NEKP01 20231
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
climate change, green investments, equities, sustainability, news
language
English
id
9119019
date added to LUP
2023-06-19 10:03:42
date last changed
2023-06-19 10:03:42
@misc{9119019,
  abstract     = {{Climate change has emerged as one of the world’s most pressing issues, a development that has prompted investors to shift their focus accordingly, catalysing a significant increase in green investments. This study is set against this backdrop, focusing on the performance of portfolios of European firms classified as low or high emission intensity – green or brown respectively – during an eight-year period, from January 2010 to June 2018. Furthermore, we aim to explain the difference in performance using media coverage of climate change. We also conduct a panel data analysis to investigate the difference in individual firms reaction to climate change reporting, emissions intensity and the interaction between these terms. We find a significant discrepancy in the performance of green and brown portfolios, and can show that the green portfolio has a significant positive alpha as well as a positive relationship to an increase in climate change concerns. On a firm-level, we also find that firms with higher emissions intensity outperforms when there’s no news reporting about climate change and that firms with higher emissions intensity react worse than their low counterpart when there’s an increase in climate change news reporting.}},
  author       = {{Flygare, Anton and Tingets, Fredrik}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Climate Change Coverage and the Performance of Green and Brown Equities}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}