On the Correlation between Market Risk Premiums and SDGs

Implications to Corporate Value

Abstract

There are plethora of papers analyzing the correlation between CSR / SDGs / ESG and corporate values / stock prices / stock returns, however, a few of them focus on how CSR / SDGs / ESG factors improve or destroy the corporate value and only a very limited number of papers analyze the market risk premium as factor of corporate value. This paper focuses on how the macro level SDG indices are associated with market risk premiums and the corporate value. We show that contributions to SDGs related activities pursuing to improve the overall SDG Index Score as well as SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and 13 (Climate Action) scores could increase the corporate value via the reduction of the market risk premium. On the other hand, SDG 15 (Life on Land) and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) scores are not correlated with market risk premiums, while an SDG 9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure) score is positively correlated with market risk premiums. We need further analysis to conclude the relationship between market risk premiums and SDG 1,2, 4-8, 10-12, 14, and 17.