Influência dos diferentes níveis de democracia no ESG Score das empresas

Abstract

Este trabalho investiga se ambientes democráticos diversos possuem relação com o ESG Score de empresas de capital aberto. Para tanto, estudou-se um período de 11 anos e analisaram-se empresas de capital aberto de 45 países que somaram 21.351 observações firma-ano. Investigou-se a relação entre os fatores E, S e G, de forma isolada e conjunta, com os cinco diferentes índices de Democracia, medidos no nível do país. Os resultados obtidos mostram a existência de uma relação negativa entre Democracia e o nível de ESG corporativo de forma consolidada. Encontrou-se relação positiva para empresas em países com indicador de PIB acima da mediana. Os achados desse trabalho, portanto, sugerem que as empresas de capital aberto, em países de PIB mais baixo, estão dispostas a aumentar seus investimentos em práticas ESG mesmo em face a retrocessos de indicadores sociais e democráticos.

The ESG Score is an indicator that demonstrates to the market how much a particular company is concerned with environmental, social, and corporate governance issues and currently plays a relevant role in the decision-making of various financial institutions and investment funds. As it is an indicator published by publicly traded companies in several countries, it becomes an important thermometer to understand the variations in business strategies in face of different scenarios in different cultures. The Electoral, Liberal, Participatory, Deliberative and Egalitarian Democracy indices are formulated by the V-Dem Institute starting from the year 1789, making it one of the most important collections of social data related to government systems. This work aims to understand whether different democratic environments have a significant influence on the ESG Score of companies using panel data for a period of 11 years. Analyzing factors E, S and G separately and together, against each of the five available democracies indices, using a sample of 21,531 data points publicly traded companies, it was not possible to identify a positive relationship between the dependent and independent variables. All 20 regressions using the Fixed Effects model showed negative coefficients in the generated equations. Stratified robustness tests showed that companies in countries with GDP above the group average had positive coefficients. In this way, evidence was found that companies in countries with GDP below the group average could be willing to increase their investments in ESG actions even in the face of retrogression of social and democratic indicators. In the future, complementary studies considering a longer time horizon may bring greater understanding of these impacts.