ESG rating agencies and shareholder activism: the initiation of ESG rating coverage
研究发现，ESG评级机构首次覆盖公司后，公司被股东积极干预的可能性和频率上升，也更可能回应股东改善ESG的要求。对ESG信息不透明的公司，效果更强。
Leveraging firms' first-time coverage by an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating agency after the agency expanded its firm coverage as a shock, we find that the initiation of coverage by an ESG rating agency is positively associated with the probability and frequency of covered firms being targeted by shareholder activist interventions. We also observe that coverage by an ESG rating agency increases the likelihood that a firm responds favorably to shareholders' demands for improvement in the firm's ESG policies and practices. Additional tests reveal that these effects are particularly pronounced for firms with relatively opaque ESG information environments, lending support to the information supply hypothesis. Further analyses indicate that the impact of ESG rating agency coverage on shareholder activism is stronger for firms with poor ESG practices or targeted by less professional or nonhedge fund activist shareholders. Taken together, our results support the conjecture that investors' increased access to ESG information via ESG rating agencies reduces shareholders' ESG information costs, thereby increasing their incentive to intervene in managerial decisions related to ESG.