Klimatote: Umwelt- und Politikumfeld

Klimatote: Vorhersehbare Epidemie-Hotspots? In Search for the Hotspots of Disease X: A Biogeographic Approach to Mapping the Predictive Risk of WHO’s Blueprint Priority Diseases (#167) von Soushieta Jagadesh, Marine Combe, Mathieu Nacher und Rodolphe Elie Gozlan vom 20. Oktober 2020: “We generated predictive risk maps for Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, Rift Valley Fever and coronavirus diseases …. Elevation, tree cover loss and climatic covariates were found to significant triggers for disease emergence … . We identified regions in China and Uganda to be potential hotspots for Disease X. … Using a biogeographic approach, existing disease databases and freely accessible environmental data, we were able to identify Wuhan as a potential hotspot of disease emergence in the absence of COVID-19 data. We confirm that distribution of disease emergence in humans is spatially dependent on environmental factors”.

(In fast eigener Sache) Vergessene internationale Studenten: The experiences of international students in Germany during COVID-19: A case study von Julia Söhnholz, Manh Ha Luong und Sofia Morales vom 30. April 2021: “ … the results of this study underline the heterogenous experiences of international students in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of addressing their specific needs. For instance, there is a clear need for better explained, accessible support services targeted specifically at international students” (S. 4).

Millionen Klimatote? Projecting global mortality due to non-optimal temperature from 2020 to 2100: A Global Burden of 3 Disease forecasting study (#156) von Katrin Burkart et al. vom 18 November 2020: “Globally, we estimate increases in the number and rate of deaths attributable to non-optimal temperature, with 3.27 (2.11 – 4.70) million and 4.08 (2.67 – 5.86) million annual deaths by the end of the century …. These increases are driven largely by heat-attributable burden, with smaller and more variable changes in cold-attributable deaths. Warm, low-latitude regions will be disproportionally affected, with the largest increases in temperature-attributable mortality expected in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. As our study accounts for adaptation and does not extrapolate relative risks beyond the exposure currently experienced, these estimates are likely conservative” (S. 1).

Klimatote durch Klimakriege? Is Climate Change a Threat to International Peace and Security? (#90) von Mark Nevitt vom 22. September 2020: “Is climate change a threat to international peace and security? If so, what actions, if any, should the United Nations Security Council (“Council”) take to combat the climate crisis? (abstract). … Climate change remains a “super-wicked problem” regardless of what legal approach is followed. It will result in mass migration, starvation, pandemics and cascading levels of armed conflict. The rise in armed conflict will require Council engagement and is squarely within the Council’s legal mandate to address. Why not take proactive steps today to ameliorate future human suffering and conflict? … Traditional international environmental laws are proving to be increasingly inadequate in substance (lacking a security mandate) and implementation (freeriding and enforcement of existing provisions). After all, addressing matters that undermine international peace and security are the ultimate responsibility of the Security Council. After all, the earth continues to warm regardless of how we address (or fail to address) climate change” (S. 59).

Krisen und schlechte Manager sind grüne Bremsen: Managerial and Financial Barriers to the Net-Zero Transition (#15) von Ralph De Haas, Ralf Martin, Mirabelle Muuls und Helena Schweiger vom 22. März 2021: “The analysis in this paper, based on newly collected data on 11,233 firms across 22 countries, shows how financial constraints continue to hamper firms’ implementation of greener technologies and carbon abatement measures. A subsequent analysis of data from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) reveals the environmental consequences of these financial constraints: a substantially slower decline in the emission of gas and other air pollutants by industrial facilities. … Our analysis also shows that managerial constraints in the form of environmental management quality tend to hamper green investments. Our results suggest that comparatively low (or no) cost measures—such as developing and implementing an environmental strategy; setting and monitoring environmental targets; and putting a manager in charge of climate change and environmental issues—can lead to increased green investments. Our results lend support to policy measures that ease access to bank credit specifically for green investments” (S. 29).

Klimatote durch hohe Pestizid-Risiken? The global burden of exposure to pesticide mixtures (#107) von Federico Maggi, Fiona H.M. Tang, Andrew J. Black, Guy B. Marks und Alexander McBratney vom 16. Oktober 2020: “About 5.7 billion people exceed the acceptable pesticide intake; about 4.6 billion exceed this by 100 times. … In spite of geographic variability, high income countries are more affected than low income countries due to raised health risk factors. …”

Viel mehr Veganer (und Vegatarier) nötig? Global Methane Assessment: Benefits and Costs of Mitigating Methane Emissions vom United Nations Environment Programme von 6. Mai 2021: “Reducing human-caused methane emissions is one of the most cost-effective strategies to rapidly reduce the rate of warming … Available targeted methane measures, together with additional measures that contribute to priority development goals, can simultaneously reduce human-caused methane emissions by as much as 45 per cent …. It would also, each year, prevent 255 000 premature deaths, 775 000 asthma-related hospital visits, 73 billion hours of lost labour from extreme heat, and 26 million tonnes of crop losses globally (S. 8). … methane emissions stem from human activities in three sectors: fossil fuels (35 per cent of human-caused emissions), waste (20 per cent) and agriculture (40 per cent) … In the agricultural sector, livestock emissions … represent roughly 32 per cent, and rice cultivation 8 per cent” (S. 9).

Sehr harte chinesische Kredite für Emerging Markets: How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments Anna Gelpern, Sebastian Horn, Scott Morris, Brad Parks und Christoph Trebesch vom 31. März 2021: „China is the world’s largest official creditor … This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal terms of China’s foreign lending. We collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries … Chinese lenders seek advantage over other creditors, using collateral arrangements such as lender-controlled revenue accounts and promises to keep the debt out of collective restructuring (“no Paris Club” clauses). … cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses in Chinese contracts potentially allow the lenders to influence debtors’ domestic and foreign policies. Even if these terms were unenforceable in court, the mix of confidentiality, seniority, and policy influence could limit the sovereign debtor’s crisis management options and complicate debt renegotiation” (abstract).

Klimatote: ESG

Berechtigte Kritik: Die Deutsche Sustainable Finance-Strategie der Bundesregierung vom Mai 2021 wird von Gerhard Schick von der Finanzwende u.a. wie folgt kritisiert: „Das ist Stückwerk, aber keine Strategie. … Es bleibt offen, wie die Regierung ihre Pläne umsetzen möchte. …Dass die Bundesregierung die gemeinwohlorientierten Sparkassen nicht zu mehr Nachhaltigkeit verpflichten will, ist eine verpasste Chance“. Mein Kommentar: Vergleich hierzu auch meine Kritik an den Kapitalanlagen von Versicherungen (GDV Kritik)

Kein ESG Alpha: “Honey, I Shrunk the ESG Alpha”: Risk-Adjusting ESG Portfolio Returns von EDHEC vom April 2021: “While many of the ESG strategies have positive returns, adjusting these returns for risk shrinks alpha to zero. Sector biases and exposures to equity style factors capture the returns of ESG strategies. Considering downside risk exposure does not change this conclusion“ (S. 31). Mein Kommentar: Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Portfolios brauchen keine Outperformance – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)

ESG und Value sind vereinbar: Understanding the Performance of the Equity Value Factor (#99) von Lauren Stagnol, Christian Lopez, Thierry Roncalli und Bruno Taillardat vom 6 April 2021: “… we observe that the average ESG score of European companies is much higher than in the U.S. … And it is worth noting how the gap consistently widened over the past decade. In Europe, value stocks are, on average, less well ranked in terms of ESG than growth stocks, while the opposite applies in the U.S. (18)  … holding the MSCI EMU Value index instead of the MSCI EMU Growth index actually results in a higher ESG score. And the same applies in the U.S. To sum up, the U.S. growth companies may not be as glamorous as many thought on the ESG front” (19).

Positive ESG News wirken: Which Corporate ESG News does the Market React to? (#851) von George Serafeim und Aaron Yoon vom 28. April 2021: “Stock prices only react to the news on ESG issues that is classified as financially material for a given industry by the SASB, suggesting that investors respond selectively to news. This price reaction is larger for ESG news that is positive, receives more attention, and relates to social capital issues relative to natural or human capital issues. This last point is of particular importance given the relative lack of ESG data related to social capital issues” (S. 16).

Hitze schadet (und bietet Chancen?): Climate Change, Firm Performance, and Investor Surprises (#478) von Nora Pankratz, Rob Bauer und Jeroen Derwall vom 18. März 2021: “… sample of more than 13,000 listed firms with regionally concentrated assets in 93 countries in the period from 1995 to 2019 … We find that … increases in the number of extremely hot days per financial quarter at firms’ locations decreases revenues and operating income. … Total wages per firm increase with a lag of two quarters, consistent with the idea that heat decreases worker performance, and that firms compensate for losses increasing labor inputs in later periods. … we find that both revenue and operating income surprises and announcement returns become more negative with increasing heat exposure at the firms’ locations. This finding indicates that analysts and investors do not fully take into account information on high temperatures …” (S. 31).

Langsame ESG Reporting-Konvergenz: Making sense of a chaotic ESG reporting landscape von Francesco Curto und Michael Lewis vom DWS Research Institute vom März 2021: “… the past year has seen some progress towards a convergence in sustainability reporting, including: (i) The standard setters SASB, IIRC, GRI, CDP, and CDSB working together to create a comprehensive corporate reporting system (ii) The Big Four accountancy firms in consultation with the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council, are working towards bringing about the ‘mainstreaming’ of ESG reporting (iii) The European Commission mandating EFRAG to set up a task force with the objective of the swift development, adoption and implementation of European standards (iv) The IFRS Foundation is exploring its role towards the development and maintenance of a global set of comparable and consistent sustainability reporting standards. … This paper is organised in two sections. The first provides an overview of key alignment and reporting initiatives. The second details the main ESG reporting frameworks, the key milestones and the countries moving towards mandatory climate-related reporting” (S. 1/2).

CO2-Reporting kann Kapitalkosten senken: Signaling through Carbon Disclosure (#519) von Patrick Bolton und Marcin Kacperczyk vom 19. Januar 2021: “We have shown that carbon disclosure has a material effect on firms’ cost of capital. Investors in firms that voluntarily disclose their emissions require a lower rate of return and generally the effect of more carbon disclosure is to reduce the perceived uncertainty investors face with respect to carbon transition risk. Yet, … barely more than 12% of listed companies globally currently disclose their carbon emissions” (S. 20).

Divestments durch Dislosure: Showing off Cleaner Hands: Mandatory Climate-Related Disclosure by Financial Institutions and the Financing of Fossil Energy (#51) von Jean-Stéphane Mésonnier und Benoît Nguyen von der Banque de France vom 7. Mai 2021: “We exploit for identification a French law that requires insurance companies, pension funds and asset management firms to disclose annually a wide range of information on both their exposure to climate-related risks and their strategy to contribute to mitigating climate change. …. We compare the investment behaviour of French institutional investors, which have to abide by this law, with all other unaffected financial institutions in the euro area and find that this disclosure requirement led affected institutions to cut sharply their holdings of securities issued by fossil fuel companies, everything else equal. … treated institutions priorily shed securities issued by non-euro area fossil energy companies. … even loosely defined carbon reporting standards may be enough to get a real effect on investment decisions” (S. 19).

Sehr braune Assetmanager: Slow burn: The asset managers betting against the planet von Lara Cuvelier von Reclaim Finance vom April 2021: “Less than half of the asset managers assessed have a public policy to phase out coal … because these policies often allow for many exceptions, overall, only 25% of all the assets managed within our sample were covered by a coal exclusion criterion …  BlackRock, Legal & General Investment Management and UBS AM’s coal policies apply to less than 40 % of their assets. … Only 20% of the asset managers exclude companies that still have coal expansion plans … whilst being signatories of the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, six asset managers have still not adopted any public policy to restrict investments in coal, including Vanguard, DWS and Allianz GI … passive asset managers’ exposure to coal remains very high … Half of the asset managers are publicly requesting or recommending companies they invest in align with Paris Agreement objectives. However, none systematically define time-bound requests or apply sanctions in case of absence of short-term progress. … most asset managers are not acting to protect their clients from stranded assets” (S. 5).

Relativ hohe Tabakanteile großer Asset Manager: Who owns tobacco stocks? (#124) Von David Blitz und Laurens Swinkels von Robeco vom 10. Mai 2021: “We .. examine holdings of large sovereign wealth and pension funds …. We find that several of these funds have divested from tobacco shares. We also find that European (excluding U.K.) investors seem to hold relatively low amounts of tobacco stocks, while U.S. and U.K. investors seem to hold relatively high amounts. … the “big three” passive asset managers are mostly among the largest shareholders in the tobacco industry. … We identify a number of active asset managers that are large owners in the tobacco industry” (S. 24).

Anleger wollen wirklich ESG und SDG: Get Real! Individuals Prefer More Sustainable Investments (#1386) von Rob Bauer, Tobias Ruof und Paul Smeets vom 1. Februar 2021: “We run two field surveys (n=1,669 and n=3,186) with a pension fund that grants its members a real vote on its sustainable investment policy. Two thirds of participants are willing to expand the fund’s engagement with companies based on selected SDGs, even when they expect engagement to hurt the financial performance. The support remains strong after the fund implemented the choice. A key reason is participants’ strong social preferences“ (abstract).

Klimatote: Impact

Noch wenig ESG Aktivismus: To Defeat an Activist Investor, Think Like One von Jody Foldesy, Gregory Rice und Simon Weinstein von der Boston Consulting Group vom 28. April 2021: „review of nearly 900 campaigns over the last 15 years … Although most targets underperformed the market, nearly a fifth had strong shareholder returns and attractive forward multiples (S. 2) … we can expect to see around 200 campaigns a year, or roughly one attack every other day (S. 3) … ESG issues have galvanized particular investor attention, comprising nearly 20% of all activist interventions over the last five years (S. 4) … Our survey data found that 80% of board directors want to engage directly with shareholders, but only 23% are given the opportunity …” (S. 6).

Diversified Impact Investing: Investing for Impact Why and how we transformed our investment portfolio to have an impact on Vocational Learning Technology von Ufi VocTech Trust vom April 2021: “The proposals we received illustrated that it is entirely possible to invest to meet our financial needs and, with those reasonably satisfied, to also further the mission of the organisation” (S. 25). Mein Kommentar: Prozess und Resultat (s. S. 8) sind vergleichbar mit meinen SDG ETF-Portfolios (vgl. Drittes SDG ETF-Portfolio: Konform mit Art. 9 SFDR – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)).

Traditionelle Investments

Behavioral Finance Research: The Asymmetric Rank Effect for Winning and Losing Portfolios (#28) von Edika Quispe–Torreblanca vom 26. April 2021: “.. when investors face poor performance in their portfolio, they are predisposed to liquidate their best stocks; however, when their portfolio performance improves, they become indifference to the ordinal position of their stocks (S. 35) … Beyond providing a link between rank preferences and the portfolio performance, my results help to shed light on two key puzzling features of stocks’ returns: the excess volatility of returns and the equity premium puzzle. Changes in risk aversion might explain the high volatility in returns, which could be accompanied by persistent losses, making our loss-averse investors require a high equity premium to hold stocks” (S. 36).

Ist 1/N auch konzeptionell besser als Kapitalgewichtung? The Effective Number of Securities in an Active Portfolio: Why a Passive Benchmark Should Be Equally Weighted (#26) von J.B. Heaton vom 1. Mai 2021: “Shannon’s entropy allows us to formalize the widespread notion that market-capitalization weighted indexes are not true passive benchmarks, and to further develop this idea by showing that deviations from equal weighting of all securities reflects a reduction in the effective number of securities in the active portfolio … the strong performance of the equally-weighted passive benchmark in many periods may shed light on the true difficulty of doing better than maximum ignorance, a fact that is more or less consistent with standard views of market efficiency that ought to rule out higher returns to the largest firms, since such returns are unlikely to result from additional risk relative to smaller firms” (S. 5). Mein Kommentar: Meine gleichgewichteten Portfolios performen seit Jahren sehr gut vgl. aktuell Q1 ESG: Pure globale Aktien ESG Portfolios mit besonders guter Performance – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)

Für Microcaps ist Indexing gut: Identifying the Effect of Stock Indexing: Impetus or Impediment to Arbitrage and Price Discovery? (#102) Von Byung Hyun Ahn und Panos Patatoukas vom 26. Februar 2021:“Micro-cap stock additions to the Russell 2000 experience a relaxation of stock lending constraints, an improvement in liquidity, and an increase in the speed of price adjustment to market, industry, and firm news. On the flip side, micro-cap stock deletions from the Russell 2000 experience a tightening of stock lending constraints, a deterioration in liquidity, and a decrease in the speed of price adjustment to news. …our causal evidence shows that index investing facilitates informed trading and increases the speed of price adjustment to news for more arbitrage-constrained micro-cap stocks” (S. 28).

Sind männliche Finanzberater schlecht? Risk taking in the context of financial advice: The issue of gender identity (#22) von Jerome Monne, Janette Rutterford und Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos vom 24. April 2021: “…men advised by women were indeed more likely to adopt the riskiest type of portfolio offered by the investment firm. On the other hand, we have shown increased adoption of the most cautious portfolio by female investors advised by a man as compared to those advised by a woman. …. when investors interact with an advisor of the same gender, the gender gap in portfolio risk preference is null. This result suggests that identity concerns raised by having an advisor of the opposite gender are perhaps the most important factor driving the gender gap in attitude to risk in the context of advised investment” (S. 19/20).

MiFID kann Ungleichheit fördern: Investor Experience and Portfolio Choice Regulatory costs from MiFID II (#20) von Bernd Scherer und Sebastian Lehner vom 21. April 2021: “MiFID II forces banks and wealth managers to ask clients for their investment knowledge and experience. The implied regulatory view, that less experience should result in less risk taking …. To investigate … using publicly available portfolio recommendations from robo-advisory firms. … Our findings show that banks responses to the regulatory framework are highly heterogeneous ranging from neglect (0% change in recommended portfolio allocations) to overly compliant (50% reduction in the risky asset share). Individual welfare implications are negative … The aggregated welfare implications are also negative and rise with the fraction of inexperienced investors. The regulator seems overly concerned with households taking on too much risk, never with the contrary. … the observed regulatory framework … might further increase distributional inequality” (S. 15).

Niedrige Kosten sind auch für non-profit Organisationen (NPO) wichtig: The Risk, Reward, and Asset Allocation of Nonprofit Endowment Funds (#610) von Andrew Lo, Egor Matveyev und Stefan Zeume vom 28. Februar 2021: “… return data on the universe of 311,222 NPOs in the United States. … One in nine of NPOs in the United States has an endowment fund, the AUM totaling more than $800 billion in 2018. … Only large funds with AUM exceeding $100 million and endowments in higher education outperform an asset-class benchmark. … higher investment returns are associated with better governance, lower expense ratios, and lower investment management fees” (S. 20).

Alternative Investments

Internationale ist wichtiger als sektorale Immobiliendiversifikation: Diversification Potential in Real Estate Portfolios (#18) von Bertrand Candelon, Franz Fuerst und Jean-Baptiste Hasse vom 22- April 2021: “Focusing on direct real estate, we use the MSCI (ex IPD) database to build a unique dataset of real estate market returns covering 16 OECD countries over the period 1999−2018. … Our empirical findings broadly reveal that international diversification strategies outperform sectoral diversification strategies” (S. 22).

Langfrist-REITs haben besonders gute Renditen: The Rewards of a Long-Term Investment Strategy: Case of REITs (#22) von Zifeng Feng, William Hardin III und Chongyu Wang vom 19. April 2021: “… we examine the relation between long-term investing and investment performance for commercial real estate assets, using a sample of publicly listed equity real estate investment trusts (REITs). … A representative REIT in our sample holds their properties for about 11 years. … We document a positive and significant relation between the property holding periods of a REIT and its corporate-level profitability, which translates into higher firm valuation and risk-adjusted returns” (S. 21). Mein Kommentar: Vgl. Erstes konsequent verantwortungsvolles ESG-Portfolio aus Immobilienaktien – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)

Listed Infrastructure ist attraktiv: Approaches to Benchmarking Listed Infrastructure von Tianyin Cheng, Izzy Wang, Claire Yi und Vinit Srivastava von S&P Global vom April 2021: “Infrastructure is an asset class that has historically proven to be a strong source of diversification, yield, and attractive net total returns. Given the essential role of infrastructure assets as a backbone for economic growth, and in light of the growing trend of privatization of these assets, this sector is an emerging asset class in its own right. … Listed infrastructure, in particular, may offer a sound anchor and immediate entry point into the asset class” (S. 16). Mein Kommentar: Vgl. Neues ESG-Portfolio aus weltweiten Kern-Infrastrukturaktien ist attraktiv – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)

Private Equity investments sollten Retailkunden zugänglich sein: Reduce Income Inequality: Allow Retail Investors to Invest in Private Equity (#31) von Michael Slomovics vom 13. April 2021: “In 2018, more than twice as much money was raised in exempt offerings ($2.9 trillion) as was raised in registered offerings ($1.4 trillion). … By drastically limiting (or eliminating) the ability of non-accredited investors to participate in exempt offerings, the SEC is closing-off approximately two-thirds of the capital markets to non-accredited investors, all in the name of protecting them” (S. 9).