ESG E PERFORMANCE FINANZIARIE: UNO STUDIO SU QUATTRO REGIONI INVESMNENTI

With the growing awareness of how human activities interfere with and affect the natural environment, most people have made efforts to inculcate in all aspects of their lives activities that promote the preservation of the environment. Even the world of investments, which has the main goal of gaining financial benefits, has not been spared. The question of whether limiting investment opportunities to the those that are sustainable affects the outcome of the investment continues to be debated. Studying the returns on conventional and sustainable indices shows that there are no significant changes in terms of expected return and risk associated with investment when the universe is limited to companies that are are sustainable. I apply the method of Marginal Conditional Stochastic Dominance and find that in terms of higher moments, sustainability is a better investment option in Europe and on a global scale but not in emerging markets. In US, no difference exists between sustainable and conventional investments even when the whole distribution of the returns is considered.