The ESG Integration Paradox

Today, most investment managers have something to say about environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, and written ESG policies are ubiquitous. Yet, a written policy is not a reliable indicator of a firm's commitment. Actual ESG incorporation practices vary greatly, with most investment managers falling well short of full integration. Only a few firms seem to be using ESG factors to deliver alpha, hence, the paradox. If not implemented wholeheartedly, responsible investing can lead to lower financial returns. So, why have so few investment managers gone all the way? The paradox involves a “valley” of lower returns where portfolios first absorb the costs of ESG integration before the promised benefits materialize. In the early days of ethical investing, the focus was on using negative screens to exclude certain companies for moral or ethical reasons but lower financial returns are inherent to exclusionary screening. Hard exclusions force managers to tradeoff certain risks for others. So, for example, if the market discounts tobacco stock prices to account for changing consumer behavior, eventually tobacco stock prices become attractive again as, indeed, has been the case over the last two decades. Exclusionary screening alone is a self‐limiting strategy. By contrast, ESG strategies range from active ownership and engagement, to positive screening (selecting for certain attributes), to relative weighting (sometimes called “best‐in‐class selection”), to risk factor investing, to full integration. Because the relationship between an asset manager's ESG efforts and its risk‐adjusted performance is not classically linear, asset owners should look for managers that are on the upward slope of the ESG intensity curve and are fully committed to advancing up it.     

The Benefit of Excluding Institutional Investors from Fixed-Price IPOs: Evidence from Taiwan

A simple way to mitigate the winner's curse in initial public offerings (IPOs) is to reduce the number of informed investors in IPO markets. In Taiwan, institutional investors are not permitted to subscribe to fixed-price IPOs. Excluding institutional investors raises uninformed investors' allocation rates. We show that the winner's curse is still present in Taiwan's fixed-price IPO markets even without the participation of institutional investors, but that IPO underpricing is reduced by at least 4 percent due to alleviating the winner's curse, as institutional investors are excluded from the fixed-price offerings.     

How to Integrate ESG into Investment Decision‐Making: Results of a Global Survey of Institutional Investors

The authors review the findings of their global survey of 582 institutional investors that were either practicing or planning to practice some degree of integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into their investment decision‐making process. The investors were evenly split between asset owners and asset managers, equity and fixed income, and across the three regions of the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. The survey explored reasons for ESG investing; the barriers to such investing and investor approaches to overcoming them; and the time frames used for making investment decisions, evaluating the performance of managers, and awarding compensation. The authors report finding that the commonly perceived barriers to ESG integration—the belief that ESG integration requires sacrificing returns, that fiduciary duty prevents one from doing so, and unrealistically short‐term expectations for ESG to deliver outperformance—were not as great as commonly believed. The biggest barrier is the lack of high quality data about the performance of companies on their material ESG factors—a scarcity that the authors attribute to the lack of standards for measuring ESG performance and the lack of ESG performance data reported by companies. The results were very similar between asset owners and asset managers, equity and fixed income, and across regions. However, the investment horizons of asset owners were notably longer than those of asset managers, and the same was true of equity vs. fixed income investors. Investors in the Americas were more patient about time frames for seeing outperformance from ESG, while those in Asia Pacific were the least patient. There were also differences across regions in how to overcome the barriers to ESG integration.     

机构投资者社会责任刍议

“超常规、创造性发展机构投资”的根源和归宿在于确立机构投资的社会责任一一规范投资行为，保护投资环境，促进中国证券市场成熟健康发展。在这个循环命题中，机构投资的社会责任既是“超常规、创造性”的因，又是“超常规、创造性”的果。     

Shareholder Activism by Institutional Investors: Evidence from CalPERS

This study examines firm characteristics that lead to shareholder activism and analyzes the effects of activism on target firm governance structure, shareholder wealth, and operating performance for the 51 firms targeted by CalPERS over the 1987–93 period. Firm size and level of institutional holdings are found to be positively related to the probability of being targeted, and 72 percent of firms targeted after 1988 adopt proposed changes or make changes resulting in a settlement with CalPERS. Shareholder wealth increases for firms that adopt or settle and decreases for firms that resist. No statistically significant change in operating performance is found.     

Portfolio Distortions Among Institutional Investors: Evidence from China

The behavior of institutional investors often deviates from established personal or social norms; this deviation may reflect either an informational advantage or a psychological bias. In this paper, we investigate the reasons Chinese mutual funds hold lottery-type stocks, which are characterized by low average returns and high risk. We find that funds at the aggregate level do not exhibit a propensity to gamble, but when they do gamble, they earn abnormal returns on lottery-type investments. Gambling-related outperformance is greater among held firms with characteristics that enable fund managers to obtain more informational advantages. Our results suggest that portfolio distortion is driven by the ability of managers to capitalize private information rather than by behavioral bias.     

The Interim Trading Skills of Institutional Investors

Using a large proprietary database of institutional trades, this paper examines the interim (intraquarter) trading skills of institutional investors. We find strong evidence that institutional investors earn significant abnormal returns on their trades within the trading quarter and that interim trading performance is persistent. After transactions costs, our estimates suggest that interim trading skills contribute between 20 and 26 basis points per year to the average fund's abnormal performance. Our findings also indicate that any trading skills documented by previous studies that use quarterly data are biased downwards because of their inability to account for interim trades.     

机构投资者与国债市场改革

从世界各国的实际情况来看，大多数国家政府债券的主要持有人都经历了由个人投资向机构投资的转变。我国国债机构投资主要是银行和非银行金融机构，表现出极大的偏向性和垄断性。我国应大力培育各类机构投资，推进国债市场改革。     

The Role of Institutional Investors in Voting: Evidence from the Securities Lending Market

This paper investigates voting preferences of institutional investors using the unique setting of the securities lending market. Investors restrict lendable supply and/or recall loaned shares prior to the proxy record date to exercise voting rights. Recall is higher for investors with greater incentives to monitor, for firms with poor performance or weak governance, and for proposals where returns to governance are likely higher. At the subsequent vote, recall is associated with less support for management and more support for shareholder proposals. Our results indicate that institutions value their vote and use the proxy process to affect corporate governance.     

培育机构投资者,推动债券市场发展

2012年3月份国务院发布的《2012年深化经济体制改革重点工作意见》明确提出,促进多层次资本市场健康发展。债券市场作为资本市场的重要组成部分,不仅是投资者进行资产管理、有效规避金融风险和确定金融资产价格的良好场所,而且作为直接融资的主要途径,为整个金融体系提供流动性支持和风险管理工具,在货币市场和资本市场中发挥桥梁和催化剂的作用。国内外实践表明,机构投资者的发     

机构持股对股价微观波动影响的非对称性

文章利用topview机构投资者日持股数据,构建股价波动率与机构投资者日净买率等指标,使用GMM回归、滚动回归、递归回归,从个股角度动态分析机构投资者对股价微观波动的影响。实证结果表明,机构投资者对股价微观波动的影响因不同的市场状态而具有非对称性,并可以用信息假说进行解释。管理层应依据不同的市场状态而采取合适的措施以实现机构投资者的稳定作用。     

我国机构投资者的制度缺陷及其完善措施

从2000年以来,管理层在多种场合提出要“超常规发展机构投资者”,表明了管理层发展壮大机构投资者的决心。管理层试图通过加大培育机构投资者来稳定证券市场,引导证券市场。然而,由于微观经济基础本身的问题和证券市场基本制度安排不到位,中国证券市场无论发展怎样的机构投资者,都不可能真正弥补其基本缺陷。如果我们不在基层制度层面上狠下功夫,不在社会各个层面上建立起健全的基本游戏规则,而仅仅只是在市场     

Trading Behaviour of Foreign Institutional Investors: Evidence from Indian Stock Markets

Asia-Pacific Financial Markets - The existence of behavioural bias such as positive feedback trading (PFT) and herding is well researched for advanced economies. This paper explores whether foreign...     

新兴市场环境下机构投资者投资行为——基于中国大陆资本市场的研究

本文研究中国为代表的新兴资本市场中机构投资者的投资行为。我们发现,以证券投资基金为代表的机构投资者偏好净损失成本较低的个股,同时关注股票所在地域的经济发展水平和行业特征。基金对经济发展较好地区的个股采取价值投资策略,而对上游行业产值较高和垄断行业产值较低地区的个股则表现出"题材"式迎合策略与价值型策略兼顾的投资行为。而这种两者兼顾的投资策略可以带来更好的业绩。     

The Weekend Effect: Trading Patterns of Individual and Institutional Investors

In this paper, we document regularities in trading patterns of individual and institutional investors related to the day of the week. We find a relative increase in trading activity by individuals on Mondays. In addition, there is a tendency for individuals to increase the number of sell transactions relative to buy transactions, which might explain at least part of the weekend effect.     

Behind the Scenes: The Corporate Governance Preferences of Institutional Investors

We survey institutional investors to better understand their role in the corporate governance of firms. Consistent with a number of theories, we document widespread behind‐the‐scenes intervention as well as governance‐motivated exit. These governance mechanisms are viewed as complementary devices, with intervention typically occurring prior to a potential exit. We further find that long‐term investors and investors that are less concerned about stock liquidity intervene more intensively. Finally, we find that most investors use proxy advisors and believe that the information provided by such advisors improves their own voting decisions.     

美国机构投资者发展的解析与启示

美国机构投资者顺应美国社会历史变革和经济环境变化而产生,他们历经国外机构投资者的熏陶,市场的洗礼,在竞争中不断发展壮大起来。中国机构投资者正处在兴起阶段,还存在着美国机构投资者萌芽阶段的类似困境。要培育和发展机构者,还要借鉴美国经验,倡导理性投资,营造良好金融市场环境和构建科学合理的监管体系。     

机构投资者的ESG偏好对绿色创新价值的影响

对于具有价格预测优势的机构投资者,绿色投资在发达资本市场上,是其长期价值投资的主要方式。通过我国机构投资者2010—2020年对绿色创新公司的投资研究发现,机构投资者对以环境、社会责任和公司治理(ESG)为标志的绿色创新企业,存在投资偏好。一方面,高ESG表现公司不仅存在历史更高的绿色创新能力,还存在当期对绿色创新的较高投入。另一方面,在机构绿色创新投资偏好下,机构投资者会容忍具有绿色创新能力的上市公司更低的当期超额收益率。对比民营企业,机构投资者对高ESG表现的国有企业积极性更高,进一步研究不同的融资约束和媒体噪声对机构投资者的绿色创新偏好的影响发现,在控制融资约束和媒体噪声的情况下,机构投资者的绿色创新投资偏好依然存在。基于此,就充分发挥机构投资者绿色投资作用、提高企业绿色创新意识、完善ESG信息建设方面提出相关建议。