PATRICIA CRIFO

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance and sovereign bond spreads: an empirical analysis of OECD countries

Gunther Capelle-Blancard, Patricia Crifo, Marc-Arthur Diaye, Rim Oueghlissi, Bert Scholtens

Résumé

What are the determinants of borrowing cost in international capital markets? Apart from macroeconomic fundamentals, are there any qualitative factors that might capture sovereign bond spreads? In this paper we consider to what extent Environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance can affect sovereign bond spreads. First, countries with good ESG performance tend to have less default risk and thus lower bond spreads. Moreover, the economic impact is stronger in the long-run, suggesting that ESG performance is a long-lasting phenomenon. Second, we examine the financial impact of separate ESG dimensions, and find that the environmental dimension appears to have no financial impact whereas governance weighs more than social factors. Third, we examine cross-countries differences and show that ESG performance has a more significant and stronger impact in the Eurozone than elsewhere in OECD countries. Fourth, we include evidence from the global financial crisis and find stronger influence of country sustainability performance during crisis period.

Mot(s) clé(s)

ESG performance; sovereign bond yield spreads.

Independent directors: less informed, but better selected? New evidence from a two-way director-firm fixed effect model

Sandra Cavaco, Patricia Crifo, Antoine Rebérioux, Gwenael Roudaut

Résumé

This paper develops a two-way director-firm fixed effect model to study the relationship between independent directors’ individual heterogeneity and firm operating performance, using French data. This strategy allows considering and differentiating in a unified empirical framework mechanisms related to board functioning and mechanisms related to director selection. We first show that the independence status, netted out unobservable individual heterogeneity, is negatively related to performance. This result suggests that independent board members experience a strong informational gap that outweighs other monitoring benefits. However, we show that industry-specific expertise as well as informal connections inside the boardroom may help to bridge this gap. Second, we provide evidence that independent directors have higher intrinsic ability as compared to affiliated board members, consistent with a reputation-based selection process.

Mot(s) clé(s)

independent director heterogeneity, information asymmetry, director selection, firm performance, two-way fixed effect model.

Board independence and operating performance: Analysis on (French) company and individual data

Sandra Cavaco, Edouard Challe, Patricia Crifo, Antoine Rebérioux, Gwenael Roudaut

Résumé

While often criticized, independence remains the ultimate criterion for evaluating board composition, whether for regulators or shareholder activists. In this study, we examine the relationship between board independence and firm operating performance in a panel of French listed companies, paying particular attention to heterogeneity and endogeneity concerns. We take advantage of an original database, with a time-series dimension that can be used to mitigate heterogeneity and dynamic endogeneity issues through GMM estimators. In addition, this database can be disaggregated at the individual (director) level. This design enables us to introduce firm fixed effects and individual fixed effects in (firm) performance equations, thereby controlling for heterogeneity at the firm and individual levels. To our knowledge, this is the first paper so far to provide a systematic account on this issue for France. Our main result is to document a significant negative relationship between accounting performance and the independence status (irrespective of the person). This result supports the argument of an information gap suffered by independent board members, as developed by Adams and Ferreira (2007).

Mot(s) clé(s)

board structure, independent directors, informational gap, GMM estimator, director fixed effects, individual heterogeneity