IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/chf/rpseri/rp2159.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Greening the Swiss National Bank's Portfolio

Author

Listed:
  • Rüdiger Fahlenbrach

    (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Swiss Finance Institute; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI))

  • Eric Jondeau

    (University of Lausanne - Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne); Swiss Finance Institute)

Abstract

We analyze the carbon footprint and emissions of the Swiss National Bank's (SNB) U.S. equity portfolio and compare its carbon performance to those of the world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, and to the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG). The SNB portfolio does as well as BlackRock's but has a significantly worse carbon footprint than the portfolio of GPFG. Few firms are responsible for much of the carbon emissions of the SNB portfolio so that carbon conscious investment approaches have a large impact on portfolio emissions but little impact on performance, diversification, or tracking error. We explore several avenues to reduce the carbon footprint of the SNB's portfolio, while not altering its financial performance. If the SNB excluded the firms with the highest carbon intensity rep- resenting 1% of the portfolio value and reinvested in the companies with the lowest intensity in the same sector, the total financed carbon emissions would be reduced by 22% in 2019, with no impact on the portfolio's financial performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Rüdiger Fahlenbrach & Eric Jondeau, 2021. "Greening the Swiss National Bank's Portfolio," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 21-59, Swiss Finance Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp2159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3906654
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heinkel, Robert & Kraus, Alan & Zechner, Josef, 2001. "The Effect of Green Investment on Corporate Behavior," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 431-449, December.
    2. JOSEPH A. McCAHERY & ZACHARIAS SAUTNER & LAURA T. STARKS, 2016. "Behind the Scenes: The Corporate Governance Preferences of Institutional Investors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2905-2932, December.
    3. Boneva, Lena & Ferrucci, Gianluigi & Mongelli, Francesco Paolo, 2021. "To be or not to be “green”: how can monetary policy react to climate change?," Occasional Paper Series 285, European Central Bank.
    4. Franziska Bremus & Franziska Schütze & Aleksandar Zaklan, 2021. "The Impact of ECB Corporate Sector Purchases on European Green Bonds," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1938, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Pedersen, Lasse Heje & Fitzgibbons, Shaun & Pomorski, Lukasz, 2021. "Responsible investing: The ESG-efficient frontier," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 572-597.
    6. Jean-François Bonnefon & Augustin Landier & Parinitha R. Sastry & David Thesmar, 2022. "The Moral Preferences of Investors: Experimental Evidence," NBER Working Papers 29647, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Hong, Harrison & Kacperczyk, Marcin, 2009. "The price of sin: The effects of social norms on markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 15-36, July.
    8. Dirk Schoenmaker, 2021. "Greening monetary policy," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(4), pages 581-592, April.
    9. Augustin Landier & Stefano Lovo, 2020. "ESG Investing: How to Optimize Impact?," Working Papers hal-02896673, HAL.
    10. Rajna Gibson & Simon Glossner & Philipp Krueger & Pedro Matos & Tom Steffen, 2020. "Responsible Institutional Investing Around the World," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 20-13, Swiss Finance Institute.
    11. Alice Eliet-Doillet & Andrea Maino, 2022. "Can unconventional monetary policy contribute to climate action?," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 22-35, Swiss Finance Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ferriani, Fabrizio, 2023. "Issuing bonds during the Covid-19 pandemic: Was there an ESG premium?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    2. Gillan, Stuart L. & Koch, Andrew & Starks, Laura T., 2021. "Firms and social responsibility: A review of ESG and CSR research in corporate finance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    3. Olivier David Zerbib, 2022. "A Sustainable Capital Asset Pricing Model (S-CAPM): Evidence from Environmental Integration and Sin Stock Exclusion [Asset pricing with liquidity risk]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1345-1388.
    4. Krahnen, Jan Pieter & Rocholl, Jörg & Thum, Marcel, 2021. "A primer on green finance: From wishful thinking to marginal impact," SAFE White Paper Series 87, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    5. Christian Gollier & Sébastien Pouget, 2022. "Investment Strategies and Corporate Behaviour with Socially Responsible Investors: A Theory of Active Ownership," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(356), pages 997-1023, October.
    6. Florian Heeb & Julian F Kölbel & Falko Paetzold & Stefan Zeisberger, 2023. "Do Investors Care about Impact?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 36(5), pages 1737-1787.
    7. Tiziano De Angelis & Peter Tankov & Olivier David Zerbib, 2022. "Climate Impact Investing," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 676 JEL Classification: G, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    8. Ciciretti, Rocco & Dalò, Ambrogio & Dam, Lammertjan, 2023. "The contributions of betas versus characteristics to the ESG premium," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 104-124.
    9. Steven D. Baker & Burton Hollifield & Emilio Osambela, 2022. "Asset Prices and Portfolios with Externalities [Pricedetermination in the EU ETS market: theory and econometric analysis with market fundamentals]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1433-1468.
    10. Lars Hornuf & Gül Yüksel, 2022. "The Performance of Socially Responsible Investments: A Meta-Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 9724, CESifo.
    11. Pástor, Ľuboš & Stambaugh, Robert F. & Taylor, Lucian A., 2021. "Sustainable investing in equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 550-571.
    12. Lioui, Abraham & Tarelli, Andrea, 2022. "Chasing the ESG factor," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    13. OKIMOTO Tatsuyoshi & TAKAOKA Sumiko, 2022. "Credit Default Swaps and Corporate Carbon Emissions in Japan," Discussion papers 22098, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    14. Hakenes, Hendrik & Schliephake, Eva, 2022. "Responsible Investment and Responsible Consumption," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264004, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Avramov, Doron & Cheng, Si & Lioui, Abraham & Tarelli, Andrea, 2022. "Sustainable investing with ESG rating uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 642-664.
    16. Pedersen, Lasse Heje & Fitzgibbons, Shaun & Pomorski, Lukasz, 2021. "Responsible investing: The ESG-efficient frontier," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 572-597.
    17. Opp, Marcus & Oehmke, Martin, 2020. "A theory of socially responsible investment," CEPR Discussion Papers 14351, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Chen, Tao & Dong, Hui & Lin, Chen, 2020. "Institutional shareholders and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(2), pages 483-504.
    19. Siemroth, Christoph & Hornuf, Lars, 2023. "Why Do Retail Investors Pick Green Investments? A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment with Crowdfunders," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 74-90.
    20. Hendrik Hakenes & Eva Schliephake, 2021. "Responsible Investment and Responsible Consumption," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 134, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Portfolio carbon footprint; Decarbonized financial investment;

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp2159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ridima Mittal (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fameech.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.