IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/corfin/v91y2025ics0929119924001949.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corporate ownership and ESG performance

Author

Listed:
  • Villalonga, Belén
  • Tufano, Peter
  • Wang, Boya

Abstract

Using a sample of 3083 firms from 62 countries over 18 years, we analyze how the structure and identity of firms' material owners influence their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. We find that firms with founding families or other individual investors as owners underperform, unless family members serve as CEOs, when they outperform all others. Non-family management and government entities also perform significantly better in most analyses. These results are robust to multiple data and methodological stress tests. Our findings show that ownership matters for ESG performance and give us an indication of the preferences of different types of owners regarding ESG.

Suggested Citation

  • Villalonga, Belén & Tufano, Peter & Wang, Boya, 2025. "Corporate ownership and ESG performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:91:y:2025:i:c:s0929119924001949
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2024.102732
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929119924001949
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2024.102732?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:eee:corfin:v:91:y:2025:i:c:s0929119924001949. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcorpfin .

    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.