This paper contributes to the understanding of the relation between the environmental and social positioning of companies and the financial resilience in the specific context of the COVID-19 crisis. Resilience is measured through two dimensions based on stock price data: the severity of loss which captures the stability and the duration of recovery which captures the flexibility dimension. Using a sample of 1508 US based firms, we provide evidence that firms with high environmental and social (ES) rating were more resilient than low ES rating firms during the COVID-19 pandemic by lessening the severity of price drop and recovering faster. This effect is enhanced by using a non-linear approach based on quantiles. Further, we provide evidence that the effect of ES on resilience is focused on the environmental and social components. Interestingly, we show that management and shareholders sub-categories of the governance rating, have no impact on firm’s time to recovery during pandemic crisis.

本文有助于理解在 COVID-19 危机的特定背景下公司的环境和社会定位与财务弹性之间的关系。弹性是通过基于股价数据的两个维度来衡量的：反映稳定性的损失严重程度和反映灵活性维度的恢复持续时间。通过使用 1508 家美国公司的样本，我们提供的证据表明，在 COVID-19 大流行期间，环境和社会 (ES) 评级较高的公司比 ES 评级较低的公司更具弹性，可以减轻价格下跌的严重程度并更快地恢复。通过使用基于分位数的非线性方法可以增强这种效果。此外，我们提供的证据表明，ES 对复原力的影响集中在环境和社会组成部分。有趣的是，我们发现治理评级的管理层和股东子类别对公司在大流行危机期间的复苏时间没有影响。