光华讲坛——社会名流与企业家论坛第6674期

主题：Does ESG information improve the information quality of credit ratings?（ESG信息是否能提高信用评级的信息质量？）

主讲人：Aaron YoonNorthwestern University(美国)

主持人：西南财经大学会计学院 胡宁

时 间：12月5日

线上会议：zoom:7185785565

主办单位：新时代中国特色财务与会计理论创新与方法体系研究团队会计学院 科研处

主讲人简介：

Professor Yoon earned his Doctorate from Harvard University.Professor Aaron Yoon is interested in how to account for a firm's Environment Social Governance (ESG) efforts and integrate the information into portfolio decision making process. According to the Financial Times, his research on ESG was a turning point on how investors viewed and integrated ESG information and also a tipping point for action. His work has beenpublished at TAR, MS, RAST, andregularly cited in other outlets such as Bloomberg, Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

He also won multiple awards for his research and teaching, including the Responsible Business Education Award from the Financial Times, Best 40 Under 40 Professors Recognition from Poets & Quants, Crowell Prize for Best Paper in Quantitative Investing from PanAgora Asset Management, Chair's Core Teaching Award from Northwestern Kellogg, Best Dissertation Award from the American Accounting Association, and Graham and Dodd Scroll Award from the CFA Institute.

Aaron Yoon教授在哈佛大学获得博士学位。Aaron Yoon教授感兴趣的是如何解释公司的环境和社会治理（ESG）工作，并将信息整合到投资组合决策过程中。据英国《金融时报》报道，他对ESG的研究是投资者如何看待和整合ESG信息的转折点，也是采取行动的转折点。他的作品发表在TAR、MS、RAST上，并经常被彭博社、福布斯、《纽约时报》和《华尔街日报》等其他媒体引用。他还因其研究和教学获得了多项奖项，包括英国《金融时报》颁发的负责任商业教育奖、Poets&Quants颁发的40岁以下最佳教授奖、PanAgora资产管理公司颁发的Crowell定量投资最佳论文奖、西北凯洛格大学颁发的主席核心教学奖，美国会计协会颁发的最佳论文奖，CFA协会颁发的Graham and Dodd Scroll奖。

内容提要：

We investigate whether and how the information quality of credit rating changes when a credit rating agency provides ESG ratings to a credit rating client. We take the case of S&P and its acquisition of an ESG ratings provider RobecoSAM, and find that the information quality of its credit ratings improves after the acquisition. Specifically, credit ratings become more responsive to credit risk in the post-acquisition period when firms are covered by RobecoSAM before the merger. This effect is driven by the firms with more opaque information environments, as proxied by lower analyst coverage and the absence of ESG reports. Furthermore, we find that the changes in credit ratings contain more stock price relevant information after S&P made the acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that ESG information improves the information quality of credit ratings.

我们研究了当信用评级机构向信用评级客户提供ESG评级时，信用评级的信息质量是否会发生变化以及如何变化。我们以标准普尔及其收购ESG评级提供商RobecoSAM为例，发现收购后其信用评级的信息质量有所提高。具体地说，如果企业在并购前就被RobecoSAM评级，那么在并购后，信用评级对信用风险的反应会更灵敏。这种效应是由信息环境更不透明的公司驱动的，信息环境不透明的表现是分析师覆盖率较低和缺乏环境、社会和公司治理报告。此外，我们还发现，在标准普尔进行并购后，信用评级的变化包含了更多与股价相关的信息。总之，我们的研究结果表明，ESG信息提高了信用评级的信息质量。