Australian Journal of Management

We investigate the effect of environmental, social and governance factors on the financial performance of UK firms. We examine the three factors separately to disentangle the relation of each with performance. We find no difference in the performance of firms with high or low environmental, social or governance rankings. The firms also do not differ in their systematic risks, book-to-market ratios or momentum exposures. However, high-rated firms are consistently larger. Our findings demonstrate that UK investors can incorporate environmental, social or governance criteria into their investment strategies without incurring any significant cost (or benefit) in terms of risk or return.

Information on the link between market performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities provides an indication of the extent of acceptance by investors of these types of activities. The nature of this relationship is of critical importance for management trying to reconcile the demands of the company’s shareholders with those of a much wider group of stakeholders and for investors pursuing a socially responsible investing strategy. Using an international database we investigate the extent to which expenditures on CSR activities are valued across market in six countries/regions. We find that CSR activities are highly valued by the investors in the European markets, where our findings clearly indicate that such activities lead to higher market valuations. In the US, Japan and Australia expenditures on CSR activities have a neutral impact on company valuation, which is still a good outcome for management who wish to incorporate into their decision process the objectives of a wide spectrum of stakeholders and for investors wishing to tilt their investments towards the more socially responsible companies.

Using a stakeholder engagement perspective, we investigate the collective influence of institutional investors on a comprehensive set of climate change disclosures for a global sample of large companies. The proposition tested in this paper is that the influence of these powerful stakeholders is positively associated with climate change disclosure via corporate communications channels. We find the extent and quality of climate change disclosures to be associated with three indicators of corporate responsiveness to institutional investor expectations about the disclosure of this information. These are completion and publication of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaire on CDP’s website, indications in corporate communications that CDP activities have influenced climate change disclosures, and the extent and quality of climate change information provided in CDP questionnaire responses.

With the aid of an online survey, the purpose of this study is to examine financial preferences; social, environmental and ethical concerns; and socio-demographic characteristics of Australian socially responsible (SR) investors. The study advances knowledge of SR investors’ profiles and their motivations when making investment decisions. Based on a sample of 145 investors, our findings suggest that SR investors seek financial return as well as non-financial benefits. Social conscience and social health issues, as opposed to environmental issues, are relevant to investors. Interestingly, investor risk tolerance is a relatively unimportant factor in the choice of SR investments. Finally, in terms of socio-demographics, SR investors tend to be middle-aged, be middle-income professionals and have tertiary qualifications.

Direct tests between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance (FP) have been argued to be spurious. Following this line of argument, the present study tests a mediated model in understanding the CSR–FP relationship. Specifically, we posit that reputation and customer satisfaction mediate fully the CSR–FP relationship. Based on the results from a sample of 280 Australian firms, the findings suggest that CSR is linked with FP. However, the effect is indirect: while CSR is linked to both reputation and customer satisfaction, reputation alone mediates the CSR–FP relationship. The results are interesting, suggesting that to reduce ambiguity surrounding the CSR–FP relationship scholars need to significantly expand studies that address moderating and mediating variables. Discussion is given to these findings along with paths for future research.

Market participants must rely upon probability assessments of the current state of the economy, that is, their rational ex-ante estimates of recession fears, when making financial and investment decisions. This paper explores whether ex-ante recession fears, modelled using probit analysis of coincident indicators, affect stock returns and output during recessions as well as upturns. Ex-ante recession fears are unrelated to stock returns, an unexpected result that is explained by the lead-lag relationship between recession turning points and subsequent stock market recoveries. Ex-ante recession fears have important dampening effects on output during and, especially, prior to recessions, thus suggesting that recession fears can potentially become self-fulfilling.

There is continuing debate in the asset-pricing literature as to the acceptance of the Fama–French three-factor model. While this model has received strong empirical support from tests in the US equity market, tests of the model in the Australian market have yielded inconclusive findings, particularly in respect of the high-minus-low factor. Prior research in Australia has suffered from limited datasets in respect of the accounting variables, and previous results vary with the scope of the dataset employed. Our study provides two advances. Firstly, the study utilizes a purpose-built dataset spanning 25 years and 98% of all listed firms. Secondly, the study employs a more appropriate portfolio construction method than that employed in prior studies. With these advances, the study is more able to test the three-factor model against the capital asset-pricing model (CAPM). The findings support the superiority of the Fama–French model, and for the first time align the research in this area between Australia and the USA.

This study reinvestigates the relationship between financial leverage and firm characteristics in a cross-sectional setting and a panel setting. Monte-Carlo simulation-based inference results confirm the finding of Barraclough (2007) that a cross-sectional multiple regression model sharing common divisors suffers from a latent spurious ratio problem. To avoid the spurious ratio problem, variables in changes instead of ratios are adopted in two panel models: a first-differenced fixed-effects panel model and a dynamic Generalized Method of Moments panel model. The two models respectively integrate fixed effects (e.g. the persistence nature of financial leverage) and endogeneity features of financial leverage decisions. Model results suggest past realization of debt explains most of the current debt level after controlling for endogeneity. We find no significant association between debt and firm characteristics.

JEL Classification: G32, H20

Australian banks are widely considered to have fared far better during the Global Financial Crisis than their global counterparts, continuing to display solid earnings, good capitalization and strong credit ratings. Nonetheless, Australian banks experienced significant deterioration in the market values of assets. We use the KMV/Merton structural methodology, which incorporates market asset values, to examine default probabilities of Australian banks, making extensive international comparisons. We also modify the model to incorporate conditional probability of default, which measures extreme credit risk. We find that, during the Global Financial Crisis, based on extreme asset value fluctuations, Australian bank default probabilities fare only slightly better than their global counterparts.

JEL Classification: G01, G21, G28