IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v72y2026i3p2134-2167.html

Firm Commitments

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Bolton

    (Imperial College London, South Kensington, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom; and Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, District of Columbia 20009; and Columbia University, New York, New York 10027)

  • Marcin Kacperczyk

    (Imperial College London, South Kensington, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom; and Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, District of Columbia 20009)

Abstract

A growing fraction of companies globally have made commitments to reduce their carbon emissions by a certain date. Whereas the companies that make commitments subsequently reduce their emissions, the effect on overall emissions of companies (including those that do not commit) has been small. The companies that commit and those that make the most ambitious commitments tend to have lower emissions; firm commitments are less prevalent in countries where governments have made national commitments. Overall, the commitment movements have been successful in drawing the willing but have found greater resistance from the companies that most need to reduce their emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Bolton & Marcin Kacperczyk, 2026. "Firm Commitments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 72(3), pages 2134-2167, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:72:y:2026:i:3:p:2134-2167
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2024.07298
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.07298
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2024.07298?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sorabh Tomar, 2023. "Greenhouse Gas Disclosure and Emissions Benchmarking," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 61(2), pages 451-492, May.
    2. Philipp Krueger & Zacharias Sautner & Laura T Starks, 2020. "The Importance of Climate Risks for Institutional Investors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 33(3), pages 1067-1111.
    3. Rajna Gibson Brandon & Simon Glossner & Philipp Krueger & Pedro Matos & Tom Steffen, 2022. "Do Responsible Investors Invest Responsibly? [Why and how investors use ESG information: evidence from a global survey]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1389-1432.
    4. Alex Edmans, 2020. "Company purpose and profit need not be in conflict if we ‘grow the pie’," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 287-294, June.
    5. Frederik Dahlmann & Layla Branicki & Stephen Brammer, 2019. "Managing Carbon Aspirations: The Influence of Corporate Climate Change Targets on Environmental Performance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 1-24, August.
    6. Patrick Bolton & Marcin Kacperczyk, 2023. "Global Pricing of Carbon‐Transition Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(6), pages 3677-3754, December.
    7. Baker, Andrew C. & Larcker, David F. & Wang, Charles C.Y., 2022. "How much should we trust staggered difference-in-differences estimates?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 370-395.
    8. Goodman-Bacon, Andrew, 2021. "Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 254-277.
    9. Bolton, Patrick & Kacperczyk, Marcin, 2021. "Do investors care about carbon risk?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 517-549.
    10. Dyck, Alexander & Lins, Karl V. & Roth, Lukas & Wagner, Hannes F., 2019. "Do institutional investors drive corporate social responsibility? International evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(3), pages 693-714.
    11. Comello, Stephen & Reichelstein, Julia & Reichelstein, Stefan, 2021. "Corporate Carbon Reduction Pledges: An Effective Tool to Mitigate Climate Change?," Research Papers 3955, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    12. Roth, Jonathan & Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Bilinski, Alyssa & Poe, John, 2023. "What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2218-2244.
    13. Comello, Stephen & Reichelstein, Julia & Reichelstein, Stefan, 2021. "Corporate carbon reduction pledges: An effective tool to mitigate climate change?," ZEW Discussion Papers 21-052, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    14. Tesfaye T. Lemma & Ayalew Lulseged & Mohammad Tavakolifar, 2021. "Corporate commitment to climate change action, carbon risk exposure, and a firm's debt financing policy," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(8), pages 3919-3936, December.
    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. Kim, Sehoon & Kumar, Nitish & Lee, Jongsub & Oh, Junho, 2025. "ESG lending," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    2. Li, Suyang & Qiao, Lu & Ren, Boru & Wang, Zilong, 2025. "Financing sustainability: Sustainable institutional investors and bank loan access," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Gibbon, Kayshani & Derwall, Jeroen & Gerritsen, Dirk & Koedijk, Kees, 2025. "Renaming with purpose: Investor response and fund manager behaviour after fund ESG renaming," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    4. Banerjee, Pradip & Bose, Sudipta & Dhole, Sandip & Truong, Cameron, 2025. "Greening up their act: Corporate carbon emissions reduction in response to political risk," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    5. Liang, Hao & Ng, Lilian & Yoon, Aaron, 2025. "Editorial: What have we learned about green and climate finance?," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(5).
    6. Dai, Jiyuan & Ormazabal, Gaizka & Penalva, Fernando & Raney, Robert, 2026. "Mandatory investor disclosure, sustainability commitments, and portfolio decarbonization," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1).
    7. Zhang, Qing & Hu, Zongyi & Zhang, Zehua & Zhao, Ran, 2025. "Carbon emission and idiosyncratic risk: Role of environmental regulation and disclosure," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    8. Mbanyele, William & Liu, Ying & Qu, Xinwei & Huang, Hongyun, 2025. "How does green industrial policy influence institutional investor ownership? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    9. Huang, Chenchen & Luo, Di & Mukherjee, Soumyatanu & Mishra, Tapas, 2022. "To Acquire or to Ally? Managing Partners’ Environmental Risk in International Expansion," MPRA Paper 121808, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 07 Jan 2023.
    10. Gipper, Brandon & Sequeira, Fiona & Shi, Shawn X., 2026. "Carbon accounting quality: Measurement and the role of assurance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2).
    11. Sirin, Selahattin Murat & Yilmaz, Berna N., 2025. "Tech firms and the renewable energy sector: Exploring the moderating effects of institutional ownership on financial connectedness," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    12. Shira Cohen & Igor Kadach & Gaizka Ormazabal & Stefan Reichelstein, 2023. "Executive Compensation Tied to ESG Performance: International Evidence," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 61(3), pages 805-853, June.
    13. Ugur Lel, 2025. "Toxic Chief Executive Officers; Environmental, Social, and Governance Institutional Investors as Watchdogs; and the Labor Market Outcomes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(7), pages 5722-5745, July.
    14. Böhm, Adrian & Eufinger, Christian & Kadach, Igor & Sakasai, Yuki, 2025. "Green banking illusion? The influence of “Eco-Conscious” bank shareholders on credit allocation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    15. Muchenje, Linda Tinofirei, 2025. "Stock liquidity and corporate climate performance: evidence from China," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    16. Wang, Lan & Ding, Xinge & Yang, Yudong & Wu, Ruiyi, 2025. "Corporate environmental performance and bond financing cost: A multi-stakeholder signaling perspective," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    17. Xiaoran Ni & Yi Si & Bohui Zhang, 2026. "Climate vulnerability and stock price crash risk worldwide," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 57(2), pages 257-280, March.
    18. Cheng, Cheng & Chu, Yongqiang & Deng, Zijie & Huang, Bo, 2022. "Venture capital and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    19. Wei Zhang & Xinyu Li & Guanying Wang & Xiangqian Li, 2026. "Environmental pollution and IPO pricing efficiency: evidence from heavily polluting firms in China," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 66(2), pages 757-798, February.
    20. Rabab Abouarab & Tapas Mishra & Simon Wolfe, 2025. "Spotting Portfolio Greenwashing in Environmental Funds," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 197(4), pages 811-839, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    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:inm:ormnsc:v:72:y:2026:i:3:p:2134-2167. 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.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.