The change in the cost of capital that results from a divestiture strategy can be closely approximated by a simple function of three parameters: (1) the fraction of socially conscious capital, (2) the fraction of targeted firms in the economy and (3) the return correlation between the targeted firms and the rest of the stock market. When calibrated to current data, we demonstrate that the impact on the cost of capital is too small to meaningfully affect real investment decisions. We then derive the conditions that would be required for the strategy to have a meaningful impact. We empirically corroborate our theoretical results by studying firm changes in ESG status and are unable to detect an impact of ESG divestiture strategies on the cost of capital of treated firms. Our results suggest that to have impact, instead of divesting, socially conscious investors should invest and exercise their rights of control to change corporate policy.

中文翻译：

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影响力投资的影响


资产剥离战略导致的资本成本变化可以用三个参数的简单函数来近似：（1） 具有社会意识的资本的比例，（2） 经济中目标公司的比例，以及 （3） 目标公司与股票市场其他部分之间的回报相关性。当根据当前数据进行校准时，我们证明对资本成本的影响太小，无法对实际投资决策产生有意义的影响。然后，我们得出策略产生有意义影响所需的条件。我们通过研究公司 ESG 状况的变化来实证证实我们的理论结果，并且无法检测到 ESG 剥离策略对受处理公司的资本成本的影响。我们的结果表明，要产生影响，具有社会意识的投资者应该投资并行使他们的控制权来改变公司政策，而不是撤资。