MSCI: “Among a universe of companies that have generated substantial value for their shareholders over the last decade (Jan. 2007 – Dec. 2017), we found that companies with strong management of industry-specific ESG risks and opportunities outperformed peers with poorer management of those same ESG risks and opportunities over the five year period from Jan. 2013 to Dec. 2017.”

“In this paper we apply an ESG filter to a highly selective universe of 100 companies that have already been screened for value creation as measured by ROIC, economic spread, margins and asset turnover ratio. We found that, over the last five years, companies with higher ESG Ratings exhibited higher average return on invested capital, compared to companies with lower ESG ratings. They were also valued at a premium over their other top performing peers with lower ESG Ratings. …. the main additional value of our ESG ratings did not come from our governance assessment in this case, but rather from how well these firms managed their industry-specific environmental and social risks, which varied considerably across different business models.”

You can download the paper through MSCI here. You can find the co-author Panos Seretis on Linkedin. 

Caveats: Not peer reviewed, time frame limited and it has the ROIC-cost of capital framework as the economic value add but still an interesting and useful addition to the body of ESG research.