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Environment, social, governance (ESG) has taken on increased importance in real estate investment in recent years, with benchmarking ESG being critically important for more informed real estate investment decision-making. Using 60 stakeholder interviews with senior real estate executives, this paper examines the strategic issues regarding benchmarking ESG in real estate investment; specifically, identifying areas going forward where ESG benchmarks need to be improved. This includes the issues of granularity, climate resilience and climate risk, as well as an increased focus on outcomes and performance, and using best practice procedures in delivering ESG in real estate investment.

In total, 60 stakeholder interviews were conducted with key real estate players globally to assess the use of ESG benchmarking in real estate investment at various levels (asset/fund-level, listed real estate, delivery, reporting and internal benchmarking), across regions and across different types of real estate investment players (real estate fund manager, real estate investment trust (REIT), institutional investor and real estate advisor). This enabled key strategic insights to be identified for improved ESG benchmarking practices in real estate investment going forward.

There was clear evidence of the need for improved benchmarks for ESG in real estate investment. More focus was needed on performance, outcomes and impacts, with a stronger focus on granularity around the issues of climate resilience and climate risk. Improvements in Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), as well as increased attention to Task Force for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) were seen as important initiatives. Clear differences were also seen in the use of these ESG benchmarks on a regional basis; with Australia and Europe seen as the world leaders. These strategic stakeholder insights regarding ESG saw the development of best practice guidelines for the more effective delivery of ESG benchmarks for more informed real estate investment decision-making, as well as a series of recommendations for improving ESG benchmarking in real estate investment.

ESG benchmarking is a critical area of real estate investment decision-making today. By utilising stakeholder interviews, the strategic insights from key players in the real estate investment space are identified. In particular, this paper identifies how the current ESG benchmarks used in real estate investment need to be improved for a more critical assessment of climate resilience and climate risk issues at a more granular level. This enables the identification and delivery of more effective ESG best practice procedures and recommendations for improving ESG benchmarking in real estate investment going forward. These issues have clear impacts on ongoing capital raisings by investors, where benchmarking ESG is an increasingly important factor for real estate investors, tenants and real estate asset managers.

Based on the stakeholder interview responses, this paper has identified key areas for improvement in the current benchmarks for ESG in real estate investment. It is anticipated that an increased focus on technology and the availability of more granular data, coupled with user demand, will see more focus on assessing performance, outcomes and impacts at a real estate asset-specific level and produce a fuller range of ESG metrics, more focused on climate resilience and climate risk. This will see a more effective range of ESG benchmarks for more informed real estate investment decision-making.

The aim of this paper is to document the effect of analyst coverage on the ex ante probability of stock price crash and the ex ante probability stock price jump.

This paper uses the data of non-financial firms from France to test the arguments presented in this paper during the period between 1997 and 2019. The paper also uses flexible quadrants copulas to compute the ex ante probabilities of crashes and jumps.

The results show that the extent of analyst coverage is positively associated with the ex ante probability of crash and negatively associated with the ex ante probability of jump. The results remain qualitatively the same after several sensitivity checks. The results also show that the relationship between the extent of analyst coverage and the probability of cash and the probability of jump holds when ex post probability of stock price crash and stock price jump is used.

Unlike most of the earlier papers on this topic, this paper uses the ex ante probability of crash and jump. This proxy is better suited than the ones used in the prior literature because it is a forward-looking measure.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether financial markets value a firm’s specific corporate environmental performance (CEP), i.e. its energy efficiency. This study also investigates the mechanism through which energy efficiency is associated with firm value.

For the empirical study, a sample of 324 US-listed non-financial firms during the period 2006–2019 was accessed from Thomson Reuters Refinitiv. Using baseline ordinary least squares regression models, this study first estimates the association between energy efficiency and firm value. It then tests the role of analyst coverage (the number of sell-side financial analysts following the firm) in ascertaining the value relevance of energy efficiency. To ensure the robustness of the results, alternative estimations including endogeneity and sample bias correctness tests were performed.

The study shows that energy efficiency is associated with firm value, and the role of analyst coverage as an external corporate governance mechanism is positive and significant on the value relevance of energy efficiency. Furthermore, this study documents that the relationship is shaped by sustainability-related internal and external risks, indicating that financial analysts’ role becomes more imperative when firms are subject to high scrutiny.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the intersections of energy efficiency, analyst coverage and firm value. It attempts to demonstrate how and why CEP and financial performance are linked. In the context of growing environmental concerns, the pressure of climate change and achievement of net-zero carbon emissions, this study provides valuable insights into the financial market wherein firms’ environmentally responsible behaviours are value-enhancing, and governance mechanisms are impactful. This study suggests that financial analysts can serve as an effective external corporate governance mechanism.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between corporate sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study focuses on a sample of 95 Italian-listed companies preparing the mandatory non-financial declaration (NFD) according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards over a five-year period (2017–2021), corresponding to an unbalanced sample of 438 observations. Analyst forecast quality was proxied by earnings forecast accuracy (FA) and earnings forecast dispersion (FD), built on data retrieved from the Refinitiv database. A manual content analysis was performed on NFDs to derive an SDG disclosure score (SDGD) for each sampled company.

This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that voluntary SDG disclosure matters to the capital market in that it helps enhance the information environment of companies, evidenced by improved analyst forecast quality. In particular, this study highlighted that SDG disclosure positively influences analyst FA while negatively affecting analyst FD.

This study focuses on the Italian context, which has idiosyncratic characteristics regarding the structure of the financial market, the composition of corporate ownership and experience in non-financial reporting practices.

This study indicates to corporate managers that following GRI standards may represent the right way to better integrate SDG disclosure in corporate non-financial reports and increase the relevance of such information for investors and other capital market participants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines the association between SDG disclosure and analyst forecast quality.

The study examines the effect of increased Economic Policy uncertainty on analyst optimism in the Indian market. The study also explores whether the SEBI Research Analyst Regulation, 2014, has effectively contained the optimistic nature of analysts.

The study is based on firms in the Indian market. The sample period is 2003–2020. It runs a linear panel regression to measure the impact of Economic Policy uncertainty on the optimism level of analysts' forecasts and recommendations, controlling for firm fixed effects. Further, the impact of the SEBI Research Analyst Regulation, 2014, has been assessed with the help of the difference-in-difference approach.

The Economic Policy uncertainty is significantly and positively related to the analyst optimism, reflected in the forecast bias and recommendation in the Indian context. The experience of analysts and the age of the firm positively drive optimism. However, introducing the Research Analyst Regulation by SEBI led to a decline in analyst optimism. The regulation decoupled the analysts' compensation from brokerage service transactions. Thus, the results suggest that the regulation has effectively curbed the incentive to produce optimistic output.

This is the first study in the Indian market to assess the impact of uncertainty on analyst output. It also investigates the effectiveness of the first analyst-specific regulation in India, i.e. The Research Analyst Regulation, 2014.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which sell-side analysts efficiently incorporate firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities into their earnings forecasts. In addition, this paper also investigate the CSR information efficiency of analysts vis-à-vis that of investors.

This paper measures CSR activities by using CSR strength and CSR concern scores from the Morgan Stanley Capital International Environmental, Social and Governance database. This paper uses analysts’ earnings forecast errors and dispersion as proxies for their information efficiency. To compare the CSR information efficiency of analysts to that of investors, this paper uses the Vt/Pt ratio, which is the equity value estimates inferred from analysts’ earnings forecasts (a proxy for analysts’ CSR information efficiency) to the stock price of the focal company (a proxy for investors’ CSR information efficiency).

The regression analysis indicates that analysts’ earnings forecasts are optimistically biased and more dispersed for firms with positive CSR activities. The paper also finds that analysts’ forecasts are more optimistically biased than investors in interpreting CSR activities.

The lack of standardized protocols in CSR reporting and activities has raised the risk of mispricing by analysts, threatening the stability of sustainable investments. This paper suggests that regulators and standard-setters should establish a uniform framework governing firms’ CSR activities, along with their reporting and measurement, to ensure more consistent and reliable evaluations of CSR practices.

Analysts’ mispricing of CSR activities may distort sustainable investing, as it can overly focus on the positive impacts of stakeholder theory, overlooking agency theory’s warnings about managerial self-interest. Investors need to assess CSR efforts with a dual perspective, acknowledging their societal value but also examining their alignment with shareholder interests.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to assess the efficiency of analysts versus investors in processing CSR information amidst growing sustainable investment interests. Furthermore, building on Dhaliwal et al. (2012), which found that voluntary CSR disclosures correlate with more accurate analyst forecasts, this research provides fresh perspectives on the evolving nature of how analysts assimilate CSR information over time.

Findings in the literature indicate leading financial analysts attract high levels of market attention and provide more accurate earnings forecasts prior to becoming all-star analysts. Furthermore, these analysts significantly impact the investment decisions of other market participants and thus the market price of assets. Therefore, this study examines the information role of leading financial analysts and identifies two significant conclusions. First, the positive outcomes of these analyst leaders are more informative and attract more followers. Second, informational herding by followers of these analysts is not as naïve as suggested in previous studies, as followers who smartly use information from analyst leaders tend to perform better. We also find that analysts who practice smart learning by studying and selectively employing analyst-leader decisions achieve better career outcomes.

The authors provide a general framework of behavior under asymmetric information and develop indices of diligence, objectivity and quality by an analyst and analyst firm about a studied firm, and relate them to the accuracy of its forecasts. The authors test the associations of these indices with time.

The test of Public Information versus Non-Public Information Models provides the index of diligence, which equals one minus the p-value of the Hausman Specification Test of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) versus Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS). The test of Objectivity versus Non-Objectivity Models provides the index of objectivity, which equals the p-value of the Wald Test of zero coefficients versus non-zero coefficients in 2SLS regression of the earnings forecast residual. The exponent of the negative of the standard deviation of the residuals of the analyst forecast regression equation provides the index of analytical quality. Each index asymptotically equals the Bayesian ex post probability, by the analyst and analyst firm about the studied firm, of the relevant behavior.

The authors find that ex post accuracy is a statistically and economically significant increasing function of the product of the indices of diligence, objectivity and quality by the analyst and analyst firm about the studied firm, which asymptotically equals the Bayesian ex post joint probability of diligence, objectivity and quality. The authors find that diligence, objectivity, quality and accuracy did not improve with time.

There has been no previous work done on the systematic and objective characterization and joint analysis of diligence, objectivity and quality of analyst forecasts by an analyst and analyst firm for a studied firm, and their relation with accuracy. This paper puts together the frontiers of various disciplines.

The recommendation of the analyst report is not only limited to a small number of ratings, but also biased toward a buy opinion with the absence of sell opinion. As an alternative to this, this paper aims to extract analysts' textual opinions embedded in the report body through text analysis and examine the profitability of investment strategies. Analyst opinion about a firm is measured by calculating the frequency of positive and negative words in the report text through the Korean sentiment lexicon for finance (KOSELF). To verify the usefulness of textual opinions, the author constructs a calendar-time based portfolios by the analysts' textual opinion variable of each stock. When opinion level is used, investment strategy has no significant hedged portfolio return. However, hedged portfolio constructed by opinion change shows significant return of 0.117% per day (2.57% per month). In addition, the hedged return increases to 0.163% per day (3.59% per month) when the opening price is used instead of closing price. This study show that the analysts’ opinion extracted from text analysis contains more detailed spectrum than recommendation and investment strategies using them give significant returns.

The purpose of this study is to look at the structure of the interactions between the board of directors’ chairman qualities such as chairman independence, tenure, ethnicity, age- and impression management (IM).

The research population consists of non-financial Malaysian companies listed on Bursa Malaysia’s Main Market, using data gathered via annual reports and DataStream. The study relies on the ordinary least square regression to test the direct relationships between the directors’ chairman characteristics and IM. Moreover, robustness and sensitivity tests were used to examine the effectiveness of chairman characteristics with IM. Furthermore, the results rely on the FGLS regression as an additional test. The study found that chairman independence, chairman ethnicity and chairman age have a significant impact on IM.

The results reveal that chairman independence has a negative association with qualitative IM (IMSC1). Moreover, chairman ethnicity has a positively significant relationship with qualitative IM (IMSC1) and quantitative IM (IMSC2). Also, the effectiveness of chairman characteristics has a negative and significant association with IMSC1.

The primary goal of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature and to open up opportunities for more in-depth research on the subject. So far, there has been no research into the impact of the board chairman’s (BC) personality on IM. This study serves as a warning to policymakers, businesses and their stakeholders, as well as researchers, about the importance of BC characteristics, which may impede the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms. The paper provides a framework for investigating these characteristics in the context of IM.