Does Sustainability Affect Corporate Performance and Economic Development? Evidence from the Asia-Pacific region and North America

Kyungbok Kim and Sang-Myung Lee
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Kyungbok Kim: Department of Economics, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA
Sang-Myung Lee: School of Business, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, South Korea

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 4, 1-18

Abstract: This paper explores how sustainability influences financial returns and economic development in the Asia-Pacific region and North America, utilizing real data empirically. It is controversial that sustainable activities are related to financial performance. For clarification, we tested hypotheses analyzing sustainability index, seven stock markets, financial data such as ROI, ROIC, and ROA from eleven companies, and GDP/GNI per capita, based on the Asia-Pacific region and North America. The results indicate that both financial return for companies and economic development in the two regions are positively germane to sustainable investment. Besides, we found evidence that sustainable investment impacts economic development based on variance decomposition analysis, depending on GDP per capita between the two regions. This implication will be interesting for both practitioners and researchers regarding the measurement of sustainable performance.

Keywords: sustainability; sustainable investment; corporate performance; economic development; VAR; and VECM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:4:p:909-:d:137401

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