社会福利视角下企业ESG评级激励机制研究

本文从社会福利最大化的视角出发，运用马尔可夫决策过程（MDP）和部分可观测马尔可夫决策过程（POMDP）构建了激励企业提高ESG评级的机制模型，旨在探究如何设计最优的ESG激励政策，以引导企业加强ESG实践，提升可持续发展水平。

文章首先梳理了当前ESG相关研究的局限性，提出应从社会福利角度重新审视ESG问题的重要性。随后，本文分别构建了MDP模型和POMDP模型。在MDP模型中，作者将政策制定者视为委托人，企业视为代理人，推导出了企业在不同ESG评级下采取不同行动的转移概率，并引入回退效应、保留效应和进步效应等概念，刻画政策变动对不同ESG水平企业的差异化影响。在POMDP模型中，作者进一步考虑了ESG评级的不确定性问题，将评级结果看作是对企业真实ESG状态的不完全观测，并给出了决策者信念函数的推导过程。

在实证部分，本文选取了MSCI ESG评级数据进行分析，通过对数据的处理和分组，验证了模型中的一个关键假设，即企业降低ESG投入的概率会随其ESG评级的提高而增加，表明了模型设定的合理性。

最后，文章讨论了研究结论与启示。本文的创新之处在于从社会福利最大化角度出发，运用MDP和POMDP模型刻画了政府和企业在ESG治理中的动态博弈，为ESG治理政策的制定提供了新的理论视角和决策依据。研究结论不仅为ESG领域的学术探索提供了新的分析框架，也为政府制定ESG激励政策、推动企业可持续发展实践提供了决策参考。同时，作者还提出了未来的研究方向，如进一步拓展模型的适用条件等，以提升模型的解释力和政策指导力。

[1]Friede G, Busch T, Bassen A. ESG and financial performance: aggregated evidence from more than 2000 empirical studies[J]. Journal of sustainable finance & investment, 2015, 5(4): 210-233.
[2]Bofinger Y, Heyden K J, Rock B. Corporate social responsibility and market efficiency: Evidence from ESG and misvaluation measures[J]. Journal of Banking & Finance, 2022, 134: 106322.
[3]Serafeim G. Public sentiment and the price of corporate sustainability[J]. Financial Analysts Journal, 2020, 76(2): 26-46.
[4]Heinkel R, Kraus A, Zechner J. The effect of green investment on corporate behavior[J]. Journal of financial and quantitative analysis, 2001, 36(4): 431-449.
[5]Luo H A, Balvers R J. Social screens and systematic investor boycott risk[J]. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2017, 52(1): 365-399.
[6]Zerbib O D. A sustainable capital asset pricing model (S-CAPM): Evidence from environmental integration and sin stock exclusion[J]. Review of Finance, 2022, 26(6): 1345-1388.
[7]Baron D P. Corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship[J]. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2007, 16(3): 683-717.
[8]Albuquerque R, Koskinen Y, Zhang C. Corporate social responsibility and firm risk: Theory and empirical evidence[J]. Management science, 2019, 65(10): 4451-4469.
[9]Bénabou R, Tirole J. Individual and corporate social responsibility[J]. Economica, 2010, 77(305): 1-19.
[10]Di Giuli A, Kostovetsky L. Are red or blue companies more likely to go green? Politics and corporate social responsibility[J]. Journal of financial economics, 2014, 111(1): 158-180.
[11]Widyawati L. A systematic literature review of socially responsible investment and environmental social governance metrics[J]. Business Strategy and the Environment, 2020, 29(2): 619-637.
[12]Pedersen L H, Fitzgibbons S, Pomorski L. Responsible investing: The ESG-efficient frontier[J]. Journal of financial economics, 2021, 142(2): 572-597.
[13]Hume D. A treatise of human nature[M]. Clarendon Press, 1896.
[14]Kim S, Yoon A. Analyzing active managers’ commitment to ESG: Evidence from United Nations principles for responsible investment[J]. Available at SSRN, 2020, 3555984.
[15]Chenhall R H, Hall M, Smith D. Performance measurement, modes of evaluation and the development of compromising accounts[J]. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2013, 38(4): 268-287.
[16]Anderson E W, Cheng A R. Robust Bayesian portfolio choices[J]. The Review of Financial Studies, 2016, 29(5): 1330-1375.
[17]Drempetic S, Klein C, Zwergel B. The influence of firm size on the ESG score: Corporate sustainability ratings under review[J]. Journal of business ethics, 2020, 167(2): 333-360.
[18]Chatterji A K, Levine D I, Toffel M W. How well do social ratings actually measure corporate social responsibility?[J]. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 2009, 18(1): 125-169.
[19]Li Z, Thibodeau C. CSR-contingent executive compensation incentive and earnings management[J]. Sustainability, 2019, 11(12): 3421.
[20]Cohen M A, Santhakumar V. Information disclosure as environmental regulation: A theoretical analysis[J]. Environmental and Resource Economics, 2007, 37: 599-620.
[21]Zolfagharinia H, Zangiabadi M, Hafezi M. How much is enough? Government subsidies in supporting green product development[J]. European Journal of Operational Research, 2023, 309(3): 1316-1333.
[22]Adkins L, Lury C. Introduction: special measures[J]. The Sociological Review, 2011, 59(2_suppl): 5-23.
[23]Jeacle I, Carter C. In TripAdvisor we trust: Rankings, calculative regimes and abstract systems[J]. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2011, 36(4-5): 293-309.
[24]Scott S V, Orlikowski W J. Reconfiguring relations of accountability: Materialization of social media in the travel sector[J]. Accounting, organizations and society, 2012, 37(1): 26-40.
[25]Schultz M, Mouritsen J, Gabrielsen G. Sticky reputation: Analyzing a ranking system[J]. Corporate Reputation Review, 2001, 4: 24-41.
[26]Fombrun C. Reputation[J]. Wiley encyclopedia of management, 2015: 1-3.
[27]Blank G. Critics, ratings, and society: The sociology of reviews[M]. Rowman & Littlefield, 2007.
[28]Scott S V, Orlikowski W J. Reconfiguring relations of accountability: Materialization of social media in the travel sector[J]. Accounting, organizations and society, 2012, 37(1): 26-40.
[29]Espeland W N, Sauder M. Rankings and reactivity: How public measures recreate social worlds[J]. American journal of sociology, 2007, 113(1): 1-40.
[30]Sauder M, Espeland W N. The discipline of rankings: Tight coupling and organizational change[J]. American sociological review, 2009, 74(1): 63-82.
[31]Chatterji A K, Toffel M W. How firms respond to being rated[J]. Strategic Management Journal, 2010, 31(9): 917-945.
[32]Stark D. The sense of dissonance: Accounts of worth in economic life[M]. Princeton University Press, 2009.
[33]Sauder M, Espeland W N. Strength in numbers-the advantages of multiple rankings[J]. Ind. lJ, 2006, 81: 205.
[34]Willmott H. Journal list fetishism and the perversion of scholarship: reactivity and the ABS list[J]. Organization, 2011, 18(4): 429-442.
[35]Hoskin K. The ‘awful idea of accountability’: inscribing people into the measurement of objects[J]. Accountability: Power, ethos and the technologies of managing, 1996, 265.
[36]Strathern M. ‘Improving ratings’: audit in the British University system[J]. European review, 1997, 5(3): 305-321.
[37]Mennicken A. From inspection to auditing: Audit and markets as linked ecologies[J]. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 2010, 35(3): 334-359.
[38]Greenwood R, Raynard M, Kodeih F, et al. Institutional complexity and organizational responses[J]. Academy of Management annals, 2011, 5(1): 317-371.
[39]Sheng L, Ryan C T, Nagarajan M, et al. Incentivized actions in freemium games[J]. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 2022, 24(1): 275-284.
[40]Krishnamurthy V, Djonin D V. Structured threshold policies for dynamic sensor scheduling—A partially observed Markov decision process approach[J]. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2007, 55(10): 4938-4957.
[41]Anand A, Vanpée R, Lončarski I. Sustainability and sovereign credit risk[J]. International Review of Financial Analysis, 2023, 86: 102494.
[42]Spaan M T J. Partially observable Markov decision processes[M]//Reinforcement learning: State-of-the-art. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012: 387-414.