The recent climate emergency declaration by many nations around the world signifies the severity of the impact of climate change. As an entity which consumes a large quantity of resources ranging from material to human, corporations have a responsibility to seriously tackle climate change. As a company's board of directors is typically responsible for developing business strategies, including environmental strategies, this paper explores whether gender diversity on corporate boards affect firms' emission performance. Consistent with diversity theory, we find that board gender diversity is positively associated with firms' emission reduction performance. The likelihood that a firm with a gender diverse board reduces environmental emission is 9% higher than its industry peers. To ensure that our results are robust to endogeneity, we conduct additional analyses including propensity score matching (PSM), entropy balancing, and instrumental‐variable analysis.

Purpose: This paper examines if gender diversity on corporate boards promotes corporate social performance (CSP) across industries and across countries. Design/methodology/approach: Fixed-effect panel models are estimated using Europe-wide data from 2002 through 2013. Instrumental variable estimation and propensity score matching are also used to control for potential endogeneity. Findings: Board gender diversity (BGD) improves environmental and social performance and consequently the CSP. Although the positive effect of gender diversity is prevalent across industries, the effect is more pronounced for firms in emerging markets. Practical implications: The findings suggest that gender law that fosters gender diversity can promote CSP in firms, and the benefit can be enjoyed with just an introduction of one female director to the board. Promotion of gender diversity in Europe is most beneficial in emerging markets. Originality/value: The results provide new insights to the literature, as we find that a critical mass of female directors on boards is not required to promote CSP. The research also highlights that BGD enhances CSP irrespective of the industry, and the effect on CSP is more pronounced in emerging markets where regulations regarding CSR are not so clear-cut.

Recent decades have seen an increasingly awareness of climate changes, putting a pressure on companies to do more to deal with carbon emission. One of the popular measures used in assessing how well a company commits to sustainable development and reduces carbon emissions is ESG ratings. Given the importance of both ESG ratings and carbon footprints on our society and the target of net zero by 2050, we explore the relation between carbon emission and the Refinitiv ESG scores for the US sample from 2005 to 2018. Our findings indicate that high ESG‐rated or environment‐rated firms do not have lower carbon emissions. It appears that these firms are not incentivized to do more for environment, as they have already been awarded with good publicity for being environmentally friendly. Finally, our findings also support the ‘cheap talk’ concept, greenwashing hypothesis and legitimacy theory. Companies are not genuinely committed to climate action.

We show the influence the size of a corporate board has on firms' ESG controversies. Our analysis suggests that businesses with larger boards are more effective in mitigating ESG controversies. Specifically, a rise in board size by one standard deviation results in a decline in ESG controversies by 4.30%. Our findings corroborate the anticipation that businesses need the board's advice to prevent ESG controversies. Thus, larger boards, with more human capital and more interactions with stakeholders, promote sustainability more effectively. Moreover, we find that the effect of board size is less pronounced during a stressful time but is more evident in companies with more agency problems. Further analysis validates the findings, that is, propensity score matching, entropy balancing, an instrumental‐variable analysis, and GMM dynamic panel data analysis.

This paper investigates whether Bitcoin acts as a diversifier, hedge or safe haven tool for investors in major developed and developing markets, as well as for commodities. This paper employs the GARCH Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model. The sample covers seven developed and six developing countries, five regional indices and 10 commodity series. The results show that Bitcoin acts as a hedge for investors in most of the developing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and South Korea, but only as a diversifier for investors in developed countries and for commodities. Moreover, Bitcoin acts as a diversifier for all the 10 commodities studied here. During the US election in 2016, Brexit referendum in 2016, and the burst of Chinese market bubble in 2015, Bitcoin acted as a safe haven asset for both the US and non-US investors. Understanding the role of Bitcoin is important for financial market participants who seek protection against market turmoil and downward movements. Furthermore, our findings would be of interests to regulators and governments to engage in more discussion of the role of Bitcoin in financial markets. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the usefulness of Bitcoin for investments. Furthermore, it distinguishes the benefits of Bitcoin as a diversifier, hedge and safe haven to investors in the developed versus developing markets.