Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Evidence from the 2016 Climate Policy Shock
59 Pages Posted: 3 Dec 2018 Last revised: 27 Feb 2022
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Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Stock-Price Responses to the Opposite Shocks of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Elections
Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Evidence from the 2016 Climate Policy Shock
Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Stock-Price Responses to the Opposite Shocks of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Elections
Date Written: November 2018
Abstract
Donald Trump's election and his nomination of Scott Pruitt, a climate skeptic, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency drastically downshifted expectations on US climate-change policy. We study firms' stock-price reactions and institutional investors' portfolio adjustments after these events. As expected, carbon-intensive firms benefited. Should not companies with responsible strategies on climate change have lost value, since they were paying for actions that were now less urgent? In fact, investors actually rewarded such firms. The premium the firms received resulted, at least in part, from the move into climate-responsible stocks by long-horizon investors presumably expecting a post-Trump rebound to green policy.
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