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Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues have become particularly relevant in the agendas of policymakers, investment decisions by companies and asset allocation process of investors. However, the transition to a greener and more sustainable economic system is not without risks. The literature has investigated the relationship between ESG and risk in different ways, through multiple perspectives and approaches. We select all documents with "ESG" and "Risk" in the title, abstracts and keywords available in Scopus and, after removing non‐relevant papers, we are left with a sample of 589 documents published in the period 1983–2022. To provide a view of the most important studies, we also focus on the most cited documents to discuss the methodological approaches and main results. The results show that over time, ESG has gained increasing attention from the literature, but researchers work in isolation and there is no single approach or leading core topic driving academic productivity; a clear taxonomy of ESG risks appears to be missing. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss research on ESG and risk from a financial perspective. The results highlight some existing gaps in the literature that can provide a hint for the development of the topic by researchers. These include a clearer taxonomy of ESG risks that can affect investors' and companies' decisions, a greater effort to evaluate how ESG risks distribute and spill from one sector to another and the inclusion of emerging economies and small and medium‐sized enterprises in the samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics is increasingly affecting corporates behaviour and their ability to attract investors. Corporate ESG practices are nowadays considered as a key element in evaluating creditworthiness and the cost of capital, to direct funds to the best‐performing companies that limit the harmful impact on the planet and the societies. Due to this increased interest in ESG by companies, investors and policymakers, a high number of ESG scores and metrics have been developed, each with different methodologies and scopes. Because of this variety, it could be therefore challenging for investors to understand and compare ESG measures. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a method to combine the information provided by different ESG scores into a single aggregate measure of company sustainability and link this combined score to the credit rating of companies. The proposed methodology can help investors to improve their investment decisions by combining more diverse information on company sustainability as a driver of companies' credit rating, thereby reducing information asymmetries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capital regulation acts as an external force in the determination of bank capital and risk levels. Changes in the regulatory framework can influence banks' decisions. Starting from the debate of the prudential regulation after the financial crisis, this paper reviews the main empirical contributions on the role of capital regulation in the determination of banks' capital ratios and risk exposure to evaluate bank behavior. Capital and risk decisions seem to be effectively influenced by regulation, although results may vary according to factors such as time period, country, and the type of capital analyzed. Comparative Economic Studies (2015) 57, 31-54. doi: 10.1057/ces.2014.35; published online 22 January 2015 Keywords: bank regulation, capital, Basel, risk, literature review JEL Classification: G2, INTRODUCTION The latest financial crisis has highlighted how bank capital regulation is necessary for the stability of the financial system. But also, it appears that it is not sufficient to [...]

Listing firms are subject to underpricing mainly because of asymmetries of information, but IPOs backed by a venture capitalist are generally found to be subject to less underpricing. Although this condition is commonly verified by the empirical evidence, a consistent number of studies finds contrasting results. This paper aims to answer to the question: do venture capitalists effectively reduce underpricing at IPO? Evidence provides a negative answer, with venture-backed IPOs having higher underpricing especially in US markets. Meta-regression results confirm the different effect of VC between US and European IPOs. Results overall suggest that other explanations on underpricing might hold in US markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]