ESG Disclosures and Stock Price Crash Risk

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures and stock price crash risk. A stock price crash is a dreadful event for market participants. Thus, exploring stock price crash determinants is helpful for investment decisions and risk management. In this study, we use samples of major market index components in Europe, the United States, and Japan to perform regression analyses, after controlling for other potential stock price crash determinants. We estimate static two-way fixed-effect models and dynamic GMM models. We find that coefficients of firm-level ESG disclosures are not statistically significant in the static model. ESG disclosure coefficients in the dynamic model are not statistically significant in the U.S. market sample. On the other hand, coefficients of ESG disclosure scores in the dynamic model are statistically significant and negative in the European and Japanese marker sample. Our findings suggest that ESG disclosures lower future stock price crash risk; however, the effect and predictive power of ESG disclosures differ among regions.