A survey on ESG: investors, institutions and firms

Purpose Over the past two decades, the topics of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) have attracted an increasing amount of interest, reflecting a growing sensitivity of investors and corporations towards environmental, social and governance issues. Design/methodology/approach This survey offers an overview of the academic literature on ESG/CSR through the lens of investors, institutions and firms. We first discuss the definitions of ESG and CSR and their relationship to each other. Findings We next describe how ESG is measured and note problems with the measurement of and quality of ESG data and discrepancies between different measures of ESG. We then…