SSRN Id3438533 1
SSRN Id3438533 1
Abstract
This paper investigates the divergence of environmental, social, and governance
(ESG) ratings based on data from six prominent ESG rating agencies: KLD, Sustaina-
lytics, Moody’s ESG (Vigeo-Eiris), S&P Global (RobecoSAM), Refinitiv (Asset4), and
MSCI. We document the rating divergence and map the different methodologies onto
a common taxonomy of categories. Using this taxonomy, we decompose the divergence
into contributions of scope, measurement, and weight. Measurement contributes 56% of
the divergence, scope 38%, and weight 6%. Further analyzing the reasons for measure-
ment divergence, we detect a rater effect where a rater’s overall view of a firm influences
the measurement of specific categories. The results call for greater attention to how the
data underlying ESG ratings are generated.
∗
We thank Alex Edmans and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. We also thank Suraj Srinivasan and three anonymous referees at
Management Science for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We thank all the ESG rating agencies that provided their data
to this project. We thank Andrew King, Eric Orts, Jason Jay, Kathryn Kaminski, Lisa Goldberg, René Bohnsack, Robert Eccles, Stefano Ramelli,
Thomas Lyon, Timo Busch, and Yannick Le Pen, as well as participants at the AFA conference, the EFA conference, the GRASFI conference,
the Gronen conference, the Frankfurt School of Finance ESG seminar, the JOIM seminar, the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei webinar, the COIN
Seminar at the JRC of the European Commission, the Harvard Kennedy School M-RCBG seminar, the Wharton Business Ethics seminar, the
Geneva Sustainable Finance Summit, the Liechtenstein Sustainable Finance Workshop, and the Brown Bag Lunch Finance Seminar at the University
of Zurich for their inputs. Jonathan Hsieh, Armaan Gori, Andrew Lu, Erin Duddy, Sanjana Rajaram, and Nadya Dettwiler provided excellent
research assistance. All remaining errors are ours. Roberto Rigobon and Florian Berg are grateful to Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment
Management Board, AQR Capital Management, MFS Investment Management, AssetOne Asset Management, and Qontigo — members of the
Aggregate Confusion Project Council — for their generous support. Julian Kölbel gratefully acknowledges financial support of the BMW Foundation
Herbert Quandt. Correspondence to: Roberto Rigobon, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT, 50 Memorial Drive, E62-520, Cambridge, MA
02142–1347, U.S.A., [email protected], tel: +1 617 258 8374.
2. Data
ESG ratings first emerged in the 1980s as a way for investors to screen companies on environmental,
social, and corporate governance performance. The earliest ESG rating agency, Eiris (merged with Vi-
geo in 2015), was established in 1983 in France, and 7 years later, Kinder, Lydenberg & Domini (KLD)
was established in the United States. While initially catering to a highly specialized investor clientele,
including faith-based organizations, the market for ESG ratings has widened dramatically, especially
in the past decade. Because ESG ratings are an essential basis for most kinds of sustainable investing,
the market for ESG ratings grew in parallel to sustainable investing. As sustainable investing tran-
sitioned from niche to mainstream, many early ESG rating providers were acquired by established
financial data providers. For example, MSCI bought KLD in 2010, Morningstar acquired 40% of Sus-
tainalytics in 2017, Moody’s bought Vigeo-Eiris in 2019, and S&P Global bought RobecoSAM in 2019.
ESG rating agencies allow investors to screen companies for ESG performance, like credit ratings
allow investors to screen companies for creditworthiness. However, at least three important differ-
ences between ESG ratings and credit ratings exist. First, while creditworthiness is relatively clearly
defined as the probability of default, the definition of ESG performance is less clear. It is a concept
based on values that are diverse and evolving. Thus, an important part of the service that ESG
rating agencies offer is an interpretation of what ESG performance means. Second, while financial
reporting standards have matured and converged over the past century, ESG reporting is in its in-
fancy. There are competing reporting standards for ESG disclosure, many of which are voluntary or
limited to single jurisdictions, giving corporations broad discretion regarding whether and what to
report. Thus, ESG ratings provide a service to investors by collecting and aggregating information
from across a spectrum of sources and reporting standards. These two differences explain why the
divergence between ESG ratings is so much more pronounced than the divergence between credit
4.1 Scope
The decomposition of ESG rating divergence is not trivial because at the granular level, the struc-
tures of different ESG ratings are incompatible. Each rater chooses to break down the concept of
ESG performance into different indicators and organizes them in different hierarchies. For example,
at the first level of disaggregation, Moody’s ESG, S&P Global, MSCI, and Sustainalytics have three
dimensions (E, S, and G), Refinitiv has four, and KLD has seven. Below these first-level dimensions,
there are between one and three levels of more granular sub-categories, depending on the rater. At
the lowest level, our data set contains between 38 and 282 indicators per rater, which often, but not
always, relate to similar underlying attributes. These incompatible structures make it difficult to
understand how and why different raters assess the same company in different ways.
We impose our own taxonomy on the data to perform a meaningful comparison of these different
rating systems. We develop this taxonomy using a bottom-up approach. First, we create a long list of
all available indicators and their detailed descriptions. In cases where the descriptions were not avail-
able (or were insufficient), we interviewed the data providers for clarification. In total, the list contains
709 indicators. Second, we group indicators that describe the same attribute in the same category.
For example, we group all indicators related to the category Water, as shown in Table 3. Third, we it-
eratively refine the taxonomy, following two rules: (a) each indicator is assigned to only one category,
and (b) a new category is established when at least two indicators from different raters both describe
an attribute that is not yet covered by existing categories. For example, indicators related to Forests
were taken out of the larger category of Biodiversity to form their own category. The classification
is purely based on the attribute that indicators intend to measure, regardless of the method or data
source used. Indicators that are unique to one rater and could not be grouped with indicators from
other raters were labeled “unclassified” and each given their own rater-specific category.
The resulting taxonomy, shown in Table 4, assigns the 709 indicators to a total of 64 distinct
categories. Refinitiv has the most individual indicators with 282, followed by Sustainalytics with 163.
KLD, S&P Global, and MSCI have 78, 80, and 68, respectively, and Moody’s ESG has 38. Some
categories—Forests, for example—contain only one indicator from two raters. Others, such as Supply
10
1 ∑
Cf kj = If ki (1)
nf kj
i∈Nf kj
Category scores represent a rating agency’s assessment of a certain ESG category. They are based
on different sets of indicators that each rely on different measurement protocols. It follows that differ-
ences between category scores stem from differences in how rating agencies choose to measure, rather
than what they choose to measure. Thus, differences between the same categories from different
raters can be interpreted as measurement divergence. Some rating agencies employ different sets of
indicators for different industries. Such industry-specific considerations about measurement are also
reflected in the category scores because those scores take the average of all available indicator values.
Table 5 shows the correlations between the categories. The correlations are calculated on the basis
of complete pairwise observations per category and rater pair. The table offers two insights. First,
correlation levels are heterogeneous. Environmental Policy, for instance, has an average correlation
level of 0.55. This indicates at least some level of agreement regarding the existence and quality of
the firms’ environmental policy. However, even categories that measure straightforward facts that
are easily obtained from public records do not all have high levels of correlation. For instance, mem-
bership of the UN Global Compact and CEO/Chairperson separation should be unambiguous but
show correlations of 0.92 and 0.59, respectively. There are also several negative correlations, such as
11
4.3 Weight
We can proceed with an analysis of weight divergence based on the category scores. To do so, we
estimate the aggregation rule that transforms the category scores Cf kj into the rating Rf k for each
rater k. Category scores, as defined in Section 4.2, serve as independent variables. When no indicator
values are available to compute the category score for a given firm, the score is set to zero. This is
necessary to run regressions without dropping all categories with missing values, which are numerous.
Of course, this entails an assumption that missing data indicate poor performance. Categories for
which no values are available for any firm in the common sample are dropped. After this treatment,
category scores are normalized to zero mean and unit variance, corresponding to the normalized
ratings. Each unclassified indicator is treated as a separate rater-specific category.
We perform a non-negative least squares regression, which includes the constraint that coefficients
cannot be negative. This is because we know a priori the directionality of all indicators and can thus
12
13
5. Decomposition
So far, we have shown that scope, measurement, and weight divergence exist. In this section, we
decompose the overall ratings divergence into the contributions of scope, measurement, and weight
divergence. We perform an arithmetic decomposition that relies on the taxonomy, the category scores,
and the aggregation weights estimated in Section 4. Scope divergence is partialed out by considering
only the categories that are exclusively contained in one of the two ratings. Measurement divergence
is isolated by calculating both ratings with identical weights so that differences can only stem from
differences in measurement. Weight divergence is what remains of the total difference.
We assume that all ESG ratings are linear combinations of their category scores, based on the
quality of fit of the linear estimations. Let R̂f k (where k ∈ a, b) be the rating provided by rating
agency a and rating agency b for a common set of f companies. R̂f k denotes the fitted rating and
14
Common categories included in the scope of both raters are denoted as Cf kjcom . Exclusive cate-
gories included by only one rater are denoted as Cf aja,ex and Cf bjb,ex . We separate the rating based
on common and exclusive categories as follows:
On this basis, we can provide terms for the contributions of scope, measurement, and weight
divergence to the overall divergence. Scope divergence ∆scope is the difference between ratings that
are calculated using only mutually exclusive categories. Measurement divergence ∆meas is calcu-
lated based on the common categories and identical weights for both raters. The identical weights
ŵ∗ are estimated jointly for two ratings, as specified in Equation 7. This is a non-negative pool-
ing regression of the stacked ratings on the stacked category scores of the two raters. Because
the regression optimizes the fit with ŵ∗ , we can attribute the remaining differences to measure-
ment divergence. Weight divergence ∆weights is simply the remainder of the total difference, or,
more explicitly, a rater’s category scores multiplied with the difference between the rater-specific
weights ŵajcom and ŵ∗ . It must be noted that all these calculations are performed using the fitted
ratings R̂ and the fitted weights ŵ because the original aggregation function is not known with cer-
tainty.
The terms for scope, measurement, and weight are given as follows:
15
We analyze the variance of ∆a,b over the sample of firms to calculate the cross-sectional contri-
bution of scope, weight, and measurement. Taking variances in Equation 5, we obtain:
16
17
where 1f are dummies for each firm, 1f ×k is an interaction term between firm and rater fixed effects,
and 1f ×j is an interaction term between firm and category fixed effects. The vector Cf kj stacks
the scores for all common categories across all raters and firms. We drop pure category and rater
fixed effects because of the normalization at the rating and category scores level. We only use the
intersection of categories from all raters and the common sample of firms to reduce sample bias.
The baseline regression (Equation 9) explains category scores with firm dummies. The second
regression adds the firm-rater fixed effects, that is, a dummy variable for each firm-rater pair. The
increment in R2 between the two regressions is the rater effect. The third and fourth regressions
18
where λ controls the penalty. When λ = 0, the estimates from OLS are recovered. As λ increases, the
variables with the smallest explanatory power are eliminated. In other words, the first category that
has the smallest marginal contribution to the R2 is dropped from the regression (or its coefficient is
set to zero). When λ continues to increase, more and more coefficients are set to zero, until there is
only one category left.
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7. Conclusions
The contribution of this article is a decomposition of ESG ratings divergence. Chatterji et al.
(2016) have taken an important first step by distinguishing two aspects that matter, first, how ESG
raters define what they intend to measure, and second, how they measure it. However, their analysis
leaves open to what extent these two aspects drive divergence. As a result, the difference between
any two ratings remains difficult to interpret. In this paper, we decompose the divergence into the
elements of scope, weight, and measurement. Scope and weight reflect what an ESG rating intends to
measure, whereas measurement reflects how it is measured. We show that measurement divergence
is the main driver of ESG rating divergence. Our findings demonstrate that ESG rating divergence is
not merely a matter of varying definitions but a fundamental disagreement about the underlying data.
It is legitimate that different raters take different views on which categories are most important in
ESG evaluation. A variety of opinions may be desirable given that the users of ESG ratings also have
heterogeneous preferences for scope and weight. However, measurement divergence is problematic if
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2
Values of other ratings
Rater
S&P Global
Moody’s ESG
0 KLD
Refinitiv
MSCI
−2
−4
−2 −1 0 1 2 3
Value of benchmark rating (Sustainalytics)
26
I1,n An I2,n
A4 I2,3
R1 R2
I1,3 A3
I1,2 A2 I2,2
I1,1 A1 I2,1
27
0.5
Rating
0.0
Residual
Scope
Measurement
Weight
−0.5
−1.0
Asset4 Rating (original)
Board (A4)
Other
Indigenous Rights
Business Ethics
Other
Other
Community and Society
Remuneration
Biodiversity
Difference to fitted rating (Asset4)
Toxic Spills
28
29
Table 2
Correlations Between ESG Ratings
Correlations between ESG ratings at the aggregate rating level (ESG) and at the level of the environmental
dimension (E), the social dimension (S), and the governance dimension (G) using the common sample. The
results are similar using pairwise common samples based on the full sample. SA, SP, MO, RE, KL, and MS
are short for Sustainalytics, S&P Global, Moody’s ESG, Refinitiv, KLD, and MSCI, respectively.
KL KL KL KL KL SA SA SA SA MO MO MO SP SP RE Average
SA MO SP RE MS MO SP RE MS SP RE MS RE MS MS
ESG 0.53 0.49 0.44 0.42 0.53 0.71 0.67 0.67 0.46 0.7 0.69 0.42 0.62 0.38 0.38 0.54
E 0.59 0.55 0.54 0.54 0.37 0.68 0.66 0.64 0.37 0.73 0.66 0.35 0.7 0.29 0.23 0.53
S 0.31 0.33 0.21 0.22 0.41 0.58 0.55 0.55 0.27 0.68 0.66 0.28 0.65 0.26 0.27 0.42
G 0.02 0.01 -0.01 -0.05 0.16 0.54 0.51 0.49 0.16 0.76 0.76 0.14 0.79 0.11 0.07 0.30
30
31
32
KL KL KL KL KL SA SA SA SA MO MO MO SP SP RE Average
SA MO SP RE MS MO SP RE MS SP RE MS RE MS MS
Access to Basic Services 0.08 0.13 0.85 0.49 0.15 0.16 0.31
Access to Healthcare 0.66 0.57 0.49 0.85 0.67 0.56 0.74 0.44 0.71 0.7 0.64
Animal Welfare 0.44 0.44
Anti-competitive Practices -0.06 0.56 0.76 0 -0.05 0.56 0.30
Audit 0.57 0.66 0.62 0.62
Biodiversity 0.06 -0.08 0.06 0.66 0.61 0.41 0.47 0.47 0.01 0.2 0.29
Board 0.37 0.58 0.51 0.49
Board Diversity 0.8 0.80
Business Ethics 0.04 -0.11 0.4 0.6 0.33 0.03 0.01 -0.1 -0.15 0.38 0.14
Chairperson–CEO Separation 0.59 0.59
Child Labor 0.49 0.49
Climate Risk Mgmt. 0.44 0.42 0.8 0.54 0.54 0.5 0.54
Clinical Trials 0.73 0.73
Collective Bargaining 0.59 -0.04 0 0.18
Community and Society -0.15 0.25 0.2 0.11 -0.1 -0.19 -0.13 0.51 0.5 0.56 0.16
Corporate Governance 0.08 0.08
Corruption 0.26 0.24 -0.18 0.7 0.54 -0.19 0.37 -0.15 0.33 -0.12 0.18
Customer Relationship 0.38 -0.08 -0.09 0 -0.04 -0.13 -0.05 0.49 0.47 0.41 0.14
Diversity -0.06 -0.02 0.03 0.61 0.52 0.56 0.27
ESG Incentives
Electromagnetic Fields 0.68 0.68
Employee Development 0.22 0.29 0.37 0.37 0.73 0.23 0.19 0.36 0.34 0.39 0.29 0.31 0.55 0.45 0.51 0.37
Employee Turnover 0.4 0.40
Energy 0.22 0.13 0.49 0.25 0.8 0.4 0.27 0.27 0.4 0.32 0.41 0.59 0.2 0.4 0.48 0.38
Environmental Fines 0.05 0.05
Env. Mgmt. System 0.65 -0.09 0.46 0.34
Environmental Policy 0.52 0.46 0.46 0.63 0.61 0.62 0.55
Environmental Reporting 0.52 0.25 0.36 0.38
Financial Inclusion 0.29 0.7 0.51 0.50
Forests
GHG Emissions 0 -0.03 -0.06 0.28 0.31 0.5 0.17
GHG Policies 0.48 0.62 0.41 0.50
GMOs 0.38 0.43 0.25 0.35
Global Compact Member 0.92 0.92
Green Buildings 0.54 0.59 0.21 0.83 0.25 0.26 0.55 -0.02 0.66 0.28 0.42
Green Products 0.23 0.07 0.27 0.34 0.76 0.1 0.37 0.47 0.32 0.31 0.29 -0.05 0.53 0.44 0.53 0.33
HIV Programs
Hazardous Waste 0.22 0.13 0.34 0.59 0.1 0.28
Health and Safety 0.01 0.27 0.27 0.35 0.73 -0.1 -0.16 -0.16 -0.05 0.63 0.67 0.5 0.57 0.44 0.6 0.30
Human Rights 0 0.19 0.08 -0.01 -0.08 0.42 0.10
Indigenous Rights 0.26 -0.11 -0.46 -0.10
Labor Practices 0.21 -0.04 -0.14 0.07 0.1 0.2 0.14 0.32 0.27 0.54 0.45 0.43 0.35 0.34 0.37 0.24
Lobbying -0.28 -0.28
Non-GHG Air Emissions 0.28 0.28
Ozone-Depleting Gases 0.44 0.44
Packaging
Philanthropy 0.42 0.39 0.32 0.48 0.19 0.17 0.33
Privacy and IT 0.48 0.27 0.75 0.17 0.45 0.42 0.42
Product Safety -0.05 0.06 0.16 0 0.63 -0.14 -0.03 0.07 0.46 0.21 0.11 0.38 -0.03 0.1 0.14
Public Health 0.6 0.74 0.38 0.63 0.59
Remuneration 0.15 0.09 -0.21 0.17 0.71 0.22 0.83 0.25 0.75 0.37 0.33
Reporting Quality 0.48 0.48
Resource Efficiency 0.35 0.42 0.57 0.45
Responsible Marketing -0.5 -0.06 -0.38 0.24 0.38 0.68 0 0.49 0.05 -0.1 0.08
Shareholders 0.39 0.39
Site Closure
Supply Chain 0.15 0.17 0.13 0.16 0.62 0.57 0.53 0.56 0.61 0.66 0.62 0.6 0.53 0.34 0.48 0.45
Sustainable Finance 0.58 0.47 0.46 0.52 0.7 0.74 0.7 0.59 0.61 0.59 0.60
Systemic Risk 0.24 0.65 0.24 0.38
Taxes 0.1 0.02 0.01 0.04
Toxic Spills 0.21 0.21
Unions 0.68 0.68
Waste 0.34 0.23 0.33 0.30
Water 0.36 0.36 0.23 0.23 0.67 0.47 0.29 0.31 0.45 0.48 0.32 0.5 -0.02 0.24 0.44 0.36
Average 0.20 0.12 0.20 0.21 0.69 0.29 0.32 0.33 0.37 0.48 0.38 0.34 0.35 0.37 0.38
33
34
35
36
Dummies R2
Firm 0.22
Firm + Firm–Rater 0.38
Firm + Firm–Category 0.47
Firm + Firm–Category + Firm–Rater 0.62
37
A. Regression-Based Decomposition
In this appendix we present an alternative decomposition methodology. We regress the ratings
of one agency on the ratings of another, and analyze the gain in explanatory power that is due to
variables representing scope, measurement, and weights divergence.
Similar to the arithmetic decomposition, this statistical approach also relies on the taxonomy,
category scores, and the weights estimated in Section 4.3. Scopef a,b consists of only the categories
and the corresponding weights that are exclusive to rater b. M easf a,b consists of the category scores
in rater b and rater a’s corresponding weights for the common categories. Finally, the variable
W eightf a,b consists of category scores from rater a and the corresponding weights from rater b for the
common categories. Our purpose is to compute the linear regression in equation 17 and to evaluate
the marginal R2 of the three terms adding them to the regression one at a time.
R̂f b = β · R̂f a +βs ·Scopef a,b +βm ·M easf a,b +βw ·W eightf a,b +ϵ (17)
R̂f a can be thought of as a control variable for the information that comes from rater a in the
construction of the three variables Scopef a,b , M easf a,b , and W eightf a,b . Hence, M easf a,b can be
attributed to measurement as we already control for the common categories and weights from rater
a but not for the common categories from rater b. The same idea is behind W eightf a,b , where we
already control for the common categories and weights of rater a but not for the weights from rater
b. This variable can thus be attributed to weights.
Given that the three terms scope, measurement, and weights are correlated with each other, the
order in which we add them as regressors to Equation 17 matters. We thus run partialing-out regres-
sions where we add the regressors in all possible combinations in order to calculate a lower and an
upper bound of their additional explanatory power.
38
39
750
Rankings of other ratings
Rater
Sustainalytics
500
S&P Global
Moody’s ESG
KLD
Refinitiv
250
40
41
42
KL KL KL KL KL SA SA SA SA MO MO MO SP SP RE Average
SA MO SP RE MS MO SP RE MS SP RE MS RE MS MS
Access & Affordability 0.41 0.57 0.25 0.78 0.67 0.47 0.56 0.55 0.71 0.43 0.54
Air Quality 0.27 0.27
Business Ethics 0.1 0.05 0.05 0.09 0.35 0.68 0.43 0.73 0.08 0.43 0.69 0.05 0.25 0.17 0.01 0.28
Competitive Behavior -0.06 0.56 0.76 0 -0.05 0.56 0.30
Critical Incident Risk Mgmt. 0.21 0.21
Customer Privacy 0.48 0.27 0.75 0.17 0.45 0.42 0.42
Customer Welfare 0.31 -0.08 -0.06 0.02 0.67 -0.03 -0.11 -0.04 -0.07 0.48
0.47
0.42 0.4 0.38 0.20
Ecological Impacts 0.48 0.4 0.41 0.39 0.65 0.67 0.7 0.65 0.29 0.71
0.58 0.48
0.69 0.21 0.26 0.50
Employee Engagement, Diversity & Inclusion 0.17 0.2 0.15 0.2 0.72 0.57 0.4 0.54 0.45 0.51
0.55 0.42
0.58 0.45 0.55 0.43
Employee Health & Safety 0.01 0.27 0.27 0.34 0.73 -0.11 -0.16 -0.14 -0.06 0.63
0.66 0.5
0.55 0.44 0.59 0.30
Energy Mgmt. 0.22 0.13 0.49 0.25 0.8 0.4 0.27 0.27 0.4 0.32
0.2 0.41 0.59
0.4 0.48 0.38
GHG Emissions 0 -0.03 -0.06 0.32 0.63 0.59 0.360.56 0.30
Human Rights & Community Relations -0.13 0.25 0.15 0.11 -0.03 -0.14 -0.09 0.54 0.49
0.64 0.18
Labor Practices 0.26 0.28 0.11 0.2 0.34 0.59 0.45 0.42 0.41 0.56 0.48
0.43 0.38 0.34 0.4 0.38
Mgmt. of the Legal & Regulatory Environment 0.05 -0.05 0.01 0.00
Materials Sourcing & Efficiency 0.35 0.42 0.57 0.45
Physical Impacts of Climate Change 0.44 0.42 0.8 0.54 0.54 0.5 0.54
Product Design & Lifecycle Mgmt. 0.29 0.07 0.31 0.29 0.78 0.31 0.47 0.35 0.42 0.35 0.3 -0.05 0.56 0.48 0.48 0.36
Product Quality & Safety -0.05 0.06 0.16 0 0.63 -0.14 -0.03 0.07 0.46 0.21 0.11 0.38 -0.03 0.1 0.14
Selling Practices & Product Labeling -0.5 -0.06 -0.38 0.24 0.38 0.68 0 0.49 0.05 -0.1 0.08
Supply Chain Mgmt. 0.15 0.17 0.13 0.16 0.62 0.57 0.53 0.56 0.61 0.66 0.62 0.6 0.53 0.34 0.48 0.45
Systemic Risk Mgmt. 0.24 0.65 0.24 0.38
Waste & Hazardous Materials Mgmt. 0.25 0.34 0.22 0.23 0.78 0.43 0.22 0.36 0.33 0.48 0.32 0.39 0.12 0.23 0.3 0.33
Water & Wastewater Mgmt. 0.36 0.36 0.23 0.23 0.67 0.47 0.29 0.31 0.45 0.48 0.32 0.5 -0.02 0.24 0.44 0.36
Average 0.17 0.15 0.21 0.22 0.68 0.34 0.33 0.29 0.31 0.51 0.42 0.33 0.38 0.35 0.40
43
44
Table A.6
Correlations between ESG Ratings (2017)
Calculation procedure and data equivalent to Table 2, except that the underlying
data is from 2017 instead from 2014. SA, SP, MO, RE, KL, and MS are short
for Sustainalytics, S&P Global, Moody’s ESG, Refinitiv, KLD, and MSCI, respec-
tively.
SA SA SA SA MO MO MO SP SP RE Average
MO SP RE MS SP RE MS RE MS MS
ESG 0.77 0.65 0.53 0.53 0.62 0.6 0.49 0.42 0.4 0.37 0.54
E 0.7 0.66 0.59 0.33 0.69 0.59 0.35 0.61 0.26 0.19 0.5
S 0.67 0.57 0.52 0.29 0.62 0.58 0.27 0.55 0.27 0.28 0.46
G 0.55 0.48 0.36 0.34 0.7 0.7 0.43 0.68 0.38 0.34 0.5
45
SA SA SA SA MO MO MO SP SP RE Average
MO SP RE MS SP RE MS RE MS MS
Average 0.30 0.29 0.34 0.33 0.41 0.34 0.31 0.27 0.30 0.36
46
47
48