Online and in-person seminar – The ESG home bias

Dr Moqi Groen-Xu, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance

Firms shift undesirable environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities abroad rather than avoid them altogether. We show that this is consistent with shareholder preferences: we find ESG incident returns to be less negative when they take place outside offenders’ headquarter countries. Our analysis is based on 7,209 ESG incidents involving 63 incident countries and more than 6,000 firms. We exploit events that involve firms from multiple countries to show that geographic heterogeneity in investor preferences explains variation in foreign incident returns. Foreign incident returns are (i) more negative for firms with a larger shareholder base from the incident country, (ii) less negative for firms headquartered in more patriotic countries, and (iii) more negative for firms headquartered in more environmentally friendly countries.

Speaker bio

Dr Moqi Groen-Xu is a Senior Lecturer for Finance at School of Economics and Finance at Queen Mary University of London. She specialises in empirical work on Corporate Finance and Corporate Governance. Currently, Dr Groen-Xu mainly works on voting participation, ESG preferences, and long term CEO incentives. Her work has been published in Journals such as the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Corporate Finance and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Her current work has been covered by academic outlets such as the Harvard Law and Governance blog, but also general interest media such as the Financial Times. Dr Groen-Xu joined Queen Mary in 2020 and worked previously at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has a PhD from INSEAD, France. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a consultant with McKinsey. Dr Groen-Xu has two daughters, born 2015 and 2017.

This is a hybrid event and the seminar will take place in Room W4.05, Cambridge Judge Business School, and via Zoom. A light lunch will be available between 12:00-12:45 for those attending in person.

To join the seminar, register and join the Zoom meeting and enter the meeting ID.

Meeting ID: 832 0910 2064
Password: 058636

For more information, please contact Emily Brown.

This seminar is organised in association with the Cambridge Corporate Governance Network (CCGN).