Annotated References

Here are sources of additional information.  The first two can be found on the internet and are widely used.  Of course, if you find anything on the internet (including the present website!) ask your investment advisor about it, if you have one.  The other references, and any that may be added in the future, are more focused on particular issues, but of possible interest to a user of this website.  For the user's convenience, each reference is accompanied some notes describing the content.

1.  Wikipedia.org

This discusses an enormous variety of topics in a reasonably clear way.  

2.  Investopedia.com

This website gives discussions of investment topics, possibly more than a beginning investor would want. 

3.  Noam Bergman, 19 July 2018, "Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement: Effects on Finance, Policy and Public Discourse." Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072529

The full paper is freely available online.  The abstract is copied here.

"The fossil fuel divestment movement campaigns for removing investments from fossil fuel companies as a strategy to combat climate change. It is a bottom-up movement, largely based in university student groups, although it has rapidly spread to other institutions. Divestment has been criticised for its naiveté and hard-line stance and dismissed as having little impact on fossil fuel finance. I analyse the impact of divestment through reviewing academic and grey literature, complemented by interviews with activists and financial actors, using a theoretical framework that draws on social movement theory. While the direct impacts of divestment are small, the indirect impacts, in terms of public discourse shift, are significant. Divestment has put questions of finance and climate change on the agenda and played a part in changing discourse around the legitimacy, reputation and viability of the fossil fuel industry. This cultural impact contributed to changes in the finance industry through new demands by shareholders and investors and to changes in political discourse, such as rethinking the notion of ‘fiduciary duty.’ Finally, divestment had significant impact on its participants in terms of empowerment and played a part in the revitalisation of the environmental movement in the UK and elsewhere."

The author considers the diverse movement for fossil fuel divestment in the UK and elsewhere, citing about 50 published sources, as well as interviews with 12 climate activists or actors in the finance sector.  He concludes "the direct impacts of divestment are small, but the indirect impacts, in terms of public discourse shift, are significant."  The next two references listed below are selected from Bergman's extensive citation list, as example contributors to the overall conclusion.

 

4.  Ellen Dorsey, 30 January 2014, updated 1 April 2014, "Philanthropy Rises to the Fossil Divest-Invest Challenge," Huffpost, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-dorsey/philanthropy-rises-to-the_b_4690774.html 

This article, by the Executive Director of the Wallace Global Fund, surveys events of 2010-2014.  The full article is available online.  An advocate for divestment, the author states, "Fossil divestment has never been primarily about the act of divesting itself, or even about doing direct economic harm to the fossil fuel industry.  Instead, it uses divestment as a tool to confront the corporate powers that have taken our political system hostage."

 

5.  Todd Schefeling and Andrew Hoffman, 30 November 2017, "Bill McKibbons's Influence on U.S. Climate Change Discourse: Shifting Field-Level Debates through Radical Flank Effects," Organization & Environment, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1086026617744278?journalCode=oaec

This paper analyzes the impact of Bill McKibbon, a prominent advocate for divestment by universities.  Only the abstract is freely available online.  The abstract finds that various liberal ideas "gained increased attention and legitimacy, while the divestment effort itself gained limited traction."  The abstract concludes by saying that the analysis "suggests that the actual influence of Bill McKibbon on the U.S. climate debate goes beyond the precise number of schools that divest to include a shift in the social and political discourse."

 

6.  Tiziano De Angelis, Peter Tankov, Olivier David Zerbib, 24 June 2022, "Climate Impact Investing," Management Science, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4472

Although this paper concerns polluting companies, not suppliers of fossil fuels, its conclusions are somewhat relevant.  Only the abstract is freely available online.  It is copied here:

"This paper shows how green investing spurs companies to mitigate their carbon emissions by raising the cost of capital of the most carbon-intensive companies. Companies’ emissions decrease when the wealth share of green investors and their sensitivity to climate externalities increase. We show that the impact of green investors primarily governs companies’ long-run emissions. Companies are further incentivized to reduce their emissions when green investors anticipate tighter climate regulations and climate-related technological innovations. However, heightened uncertainty regarding future climate risks alleviates green investors’ pressure on the cost of capital of companies and pushes them to increase their emissions. Calibrated on U.S. data, our model suggests that, albeit effective, the impact of green investors remains limited given their current wealth share and practices."

The full paper, available in print, uses mathematical models to try to quantify the ideal response of companies when their stock prices fall because of divestment by investors.  I have not followed up by examining the many related papers cited by the authors.  The final claim of this paper is that when a polluter's stock price falls because of divestment the polluting company will respond by reducing its emissions, but the effect under present U.S. conditions will be small.

 

7.  Jonathan Berk. Jules H. van Binsbergen, 21 August 2021, "The Impact of Impact Investing".  (Research paperdx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3909166

Only the abstract is freely available on line.  It is copied here.  The abstract begins by imagining someone who tries to achieve transformation by divesting stock that contribute to climate change.   It concludes that divestment will have little effect, and suggests that the investor instead become an active shareholder— roughly going through the approaches of this website.

"The change in the cost of capital that results from a divestiture strategy can be closely approximated as a simple linear function of three parameters: (1) the fraction of socially conscious capital, (2) the fraction of targeted firms in the economy and (3) the return correlation between the targeted firms and the rest of the stock market.  When calibrated to current data, we demonstrate that the impact on the cost of capital is too small to meaningfully affect real investment decisions.  We empirically corroborate these small estimates by studying firm changes in ESG  status and are unable to detect an impact of ESG divestiture strategies on the price or cost of capital of treated firms.  Our results suggest that to have impact, instead of divesting, socially conscious investors should invest and exercise their rights of control to change corporate policy."

 

8.   Davidson Heath, Daniele Macciochi, Roni Michaely, Matthew C. Ringgenberg, 06 February 2023, "Does Socially Responsible Investing Change Firm Behavior?" Review of Finance.  https://doi.org/10.1093/rof/rfad002

The full article is available online, and the abstract is copied here:

"Using micro-level data, we examine the behavior of socially responsible investment (SRI) funds. SRI funds select firms with lower pollution, more board diversity, higher employee satisfaction, and better workplace safety. Yet, both in the cross-section and using an exogenous shock to SRI capital, we find that SRI funds do not significantly change firm behavior.  Moreover, we find little evidence that they try to impact firm behavior using shareholder proposals. Our results suggest that SRI funds are not greenwashing, but they are impact washing; they invest in a portfolio of firms with better environmental and social conduct but do not follow through on their promise of impact."

The funds considered are Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) funds, which is appropriate.  These are precisely the funds that would be expected to be most concerned with the behavior and policies of the companies they have invested in.   For the most part, however, even these funds do not significantly change the companies' behavior.

According to personal correspondence with the lead author, the method has enough power to determine the average findings stated in the above abstract.  However, it is not able to obtain results for analysis of a single fund.  Therefore, it is possible that the individual funds listed in this website behave significantly better than the average calculated in the citation.