- The ESG acronym stands for a range of environmental, social, and governance initiatives that critics of shareholder capitalism suggest public companies should voluntarily implement to improve the well-being of society.
- A companion development is the ongoing call for ESG-themed investing by securities regulators and professional investment managers.
- ESG (or sustainable) investing is meant to provide incentives to companies to be more socially responsible. Specifically, to the extent that investors favour âgreenâ companies relative to âbrownâ companies, financial capital will flow to the former and away from the latter in a world where ESG-themed investment opportunities are available.
- There are two broad schools of thought on why companies and their investors should adopt ESG-intensive corporate and investment strategies.
- One maintains that doing so will make companies more profitable and thereby increase the net worth of their shareholders.
- The second asserts that companies have a social responsibility to implement ESG initiatives that go beyond simply complying with existing laws and regulations governing corporate behavior.
- The essays included in this series address various aspects of these two schools of thought, as well as government- and activist-led initiatives and proposals to promote ESG-themed investing specifically and stakeholder capitalism more generally.
Authors
- Pages
- 219
- Published in
- Canada
Table of Contents
- ESG Myths and Realities 2
- Contents 4
- 1. A Policy Framework to Move Beyond ESG 6
- 2. The New Capitalism 12
- 3. Friedman and His ESG Critics 22
- 4. ESG Investing and Asset Returns 34
- 5. The Fallacies Undermining Energy Security 52
- 6. Market Forces Already Address ESG and “Stakeholder Capitalism” Concerns 60
- 7. Corporate Philanthropy: Stay in Your Lane 66
- 8. ESG is Corporate Socialism 74
- 9. The Circular Economy: (Re)discovering the Free Market 82
- 10. Environmental Markets vs. Environmental Mandates 94
- 11. How Banning Carbon Fuels and Synthetic Products Will Hurt the Environment 102
- 12. The Impracticality of Standardizing ESG Reporting 118
- 13. ESG Mandates and Managerial Efficiency 134
- 14. Does Adopting a Stakeholder Model Undermine Corporate Governance? 144
- 15. ESG Disclosures and the Decision to Go Public 160
- 16. ESG Investing and Financial Returns in Canada 170
- 17. It’s Time to Move on from ESG 190
- 18. Putting Economics Back into ESG 202
- About the Authors 212
- Publishing Information 217
- About the Fraser Institute 218
- Editorial Advisory Board 219
