光華講壇——社會名流與企業家論壇第6674期

主題：Does ESG information improve the information quality of credit ratings?（ESG信息是否能提高信用評級的信息質量？）

主講人：Aaron YoonNorthwestern University(美國)

主持人：西南財經大學會計學院 胡寧

時 間：12月5日

線上會議：zoom:7185785565

主辦單位：新時代中國特色財務與會計理論創新與方法體系研究團隊會計學院 科研處

主講人簡介：

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教授在哈佛大學獲得博士學位。Aaron Yoon教授感興趣的是如何解釋公司的環境和社會治理（ESG）工作，并將信息整合到投資組合決策過程中。據英國《金融時報》報道，他對ESG的研究是投資者如何看待和整合ESG信息的轉折點，也是采取行動的轉折點。他的作品發表在TAR、MS、RAST上，并經常被彭博社、福布斯、《紐約時報》和《華爾街日報》等其他媒體引用。他還因其研究和教學獲得了多項獎項，包括英國《金融時報》頒發的負責任商業教育獎、Poets&Quants頒發的40歲以下最佳教授獎、PanAgora資產管理公司頒發的Crowell定量投資最佳論文獎、西北凱洛格大學頒發的主席核心教學獎，美國會計協會頒發的最佳論文獎，CFA協會頒發的Graham and Dodd Scroll獎。

內容提要：

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.

我們研究了當信用評級機構向信用評級客戶提供ESG評級時，信用評級的信息質量是否會發生變化以及如何變化。我們以標準普爾及其收購ESG評級提供商RobecoSAM為例，發現收購后其信用評級的信息質量有所提高。具體地說，如果企業在并購前就被RobecoSAM評級，那么在并購后，信用評級對信用風險的反應會更靈敏。這種效應是由信息環境更不透明的公司驅動的，信息環境不透明的表現是分析師覆蓋率較低和缺乏環境、社會和公司治理報告。此外，我們還發現，在標準普爾進行并購后，信用評級的變化包含了更多與股價相關的信息?？傊?，我們的研究結果表明，ESG信息提高了信用評級的信息質量。