IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2510.15956.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

ESG Signaling on Wall Street in the AI Era

Author

Listed:
  • Qionghua Chu

Abstract

I identify a new signaling channel in ESG research by empirically examining whether environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing remains valuable as large institutional investors increasingly shift toward artificial intelligence (AI). Using winsorized ESG scores of S&P 500 firms from Yahoo Finance and controlling for market value of equity, I conduct cross-sectional regressions to test the signaling mechanism. I demonstrate that Environmental, Social, Governance, and composite ESG scores strongly and positively signal higher debt-to-total-capital ratio, both individually and in various combinations. My findings contribute to the growing literature on ESG investing, offering economically meaningful signaling channel with implications for long-term portfolio management amid the rise of AI.

Suggested Citation

  • Qionghua Chu, 2025. "ESG Signaling on Wall Street in the AI Era," Papers 2510.15956, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2510.15956
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15956
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dai, Rui & Liang, Hao & Ng, Lilian, 2021. "Socially responsible corporate customers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 598-626.
    2. Edith Ginglinger & Quentin Moreau, 2023. "Climate Risk and Capital Structure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(12), pages 7492-7516, December.
    3. Ferrell, Allen & Liang, Hao & Renneboog, Luc, 2016. "Socially responsible firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 585-606.
    4. Samuel M. Hartzmark & Abigail B. Sussman, 2019. "Do Investors Value Sustainability? A Natural Experiment Examining Ranking and Fund Flows," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(6), pages 2789-2837, December.
    5. Chang, Xin & Jin, Yaling & Yang, Endong & Zhang, Wenrui, 2025. "Corporate taxes and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    6. Berk, Jonathan B. & van Binsbergen, Jules H., 2025. "The impact of impact investing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    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. Darendeli, Alper & Fiechter, Peter & Hitz, Jörg-Markus & Lehmann, Nico, 2022. "The role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information in supply-chain contracting: Evidence from the expansion of CSR rating coverage," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2).
    2. Denny IRAWAN & Tatsuyoshi OKIMOTO, 2021. "How Do ESG Performance and Awareness Affect Firm Value and Corporate Overinvestment?," Discussion papers 21033, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    3. Chen, Jianqiang & Hsieh, Pei-Fang & Hsu, Po-Hsuan & Levine, Ross, 2025. "Environmental liabilities, borrowing costs, and pollution prevention activities: The nationwide impact of the Apex Oil ruling," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    4. Li, Qianqian & Watts, Edward M. & Zhu, Christina, 2024. "Retail investors and ESG news," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2).
    5. D’Hondt, Catherine & Merli, Maxime & Roger, Tristan, 2022. "What drives retail portfolio exposure to ESG factors?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PB).
    6. Fatica, Serena & Panzica, Roberto & Rancan, Michela, 2021. "The pricing of green bonds: Are financial institutions special?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    7. Marius Banke & Stephanie Lenger & Christiane Pott, 2022. "ESG Ratings in the Corporate Reporting of DAX40 Companies in Germany: Effects on Market Participants," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-21, August.
    8. Zhang, Lin & Cui, Xiaomeng & Jing, Wei, 2024. "Who are responsible venture capitalists? The effect of business experience," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(PA).
    9. Michele Fioretti & Victor Saint-Jean & Simon C Smith, 2022. "The Voice: The Shareholders' Motives Behind Corporate Donations during COVID-19 (former title: Selfish Shareholders: Corporate Donations during COVID-19)," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03386585, HAL.
    10. Ralph De Haas & Alexander Popov, 2025. "Correction to: ‘Finance and Green Growth’," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 135(667), pages 1030-1030.
    11. Tang, Meili & Wang, Yu, 2022. "Tax incentives and corporate social responsibility: The role of cash savings from accelerated depreciation policy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    12. Azar, José & Duro, Miguel & Kadach, Igor & Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2021. "The Big Three and corporate carbon emissions around the world," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 674-696.
    13. Thomas J. Chemmanur & Dimitrios Gounopoulos & Panagiotis Koutroumpis & Yu Zhang, 2022. "CSR and Firm Survival: Evidence from the Climate and Pandemic Crises," Working Papers 935, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    14. Haozhe Han, 2023. "Does increasing the QFII quota promote Chinese institutional investors to drive ESG?," Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 1627-1643, November.
    15. Naseer, Mirza Muhammad & Guo, Yongsheng & Bagh, Tanveer & Zhu, Xiaoxian, 2024. "Sustainable investments in volatile times: Nexus of climate change risk, ESG practices, and market volatility," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PB).
    16. Habermann, Florian & Steindl, Tobias, 2025. "Stock market reactions to a sovereign wealth fund's broad-based public sustainability engagement: European evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    17. Cheng, Cheng & Chu, Yongqiang & Deng, Zijie & Huang, Bo, 2022. "Venture capital and corporate social responsibility," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    18. Becker, Annette & Fatica, Serena & Rancan, Michela, 2025. "Not only green: Sustainability and debt capital markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    19. Po‐Hsuan Hsu & Kai Li & Chi‐Yang Tsou, 2023. "The Pollution Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1343-1392, June.
    20. Colak, Gonul & Korkeamäki, Timo P. & Meyer, Niclas Oskar, 2024. "ESG and CEO turnover around the world," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    More about this item

    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:arx:papers:2510.15956. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.