Banche e principi UNEP FI: essere sostenibili conviene?

Our study examines the relationship between adherence to the UNEP FI Principles and the economic performance of signatory banks. Drawing on the scarce literature on the subject, we analyse this relationship while also considering the possible boost from the Paris Agreement. To this end, we manually collected information from the UNEP FI website on the banks (EU 27) that adhered to the Principles during the period 2007-2021. After applying propensity score matching to obtain a balanced sample of banks (adherents and non-adherents), we tested the relationship and found no significant relationship even after the Paris Agreement was signed. These findings, which are new to the emerging literature, suggest that adherence to the Principles is likely for social legitimacy purposes – with a clear reference to the divergence between “saying” and “doing” – or that there is a significant time lag between incurring the costs of ESG investments and the economic returns.