The European Union faced several crises in the last twenty years that destabilized its macroeconomic equilibrium and development capacity. Standard economic methodologies were capable of neither predicting nor completely solving these crises through appropriate investments. To understand the overall development performance, the well-known Human Development Index (HDI) is the most widely deployed conceptual framework. In this article, we look at the components of welfare dynamics in the EU by examining socio-economic performance. Through a 'beyond gross domestic product (GDP)' approach, we analyse public expenditures, especially focusing on the pillars of growth and socio-economic development:* The research is conceptually related to the activities of the European Topic Centre on Waste, materials and the Green Economy (ETC WMGE, European Environment Agency). It is also within the research activities of the 2018-2022 UNIFE project on Circular economy, Innovations and SMEs funded by MIUR Italian ministry under the 'Departments of excellence' programme, and the activities of the related CERCIS research centre on Circular Economy, Innovation and SMEs.
This study analyzes the relationship between firms' financial performance and their environmental performance, with a particular focus on greenhouse gas-intensive industries. Using financial and environmental data of international listed companies from 2011 to 2017, the financial impact of environmental performances was estimated, measured with multiple indicators that take into account disclosure aspects. The analysis was conducted across different industry aggregation levels, namely the entire group of industries, the Global Industry Classification System (GICS) Industry Group, and the GICS Industry. We found that environmental disclosure indexes are mostly not significant after controlling for environmental performance, suggesting that the effect of environmental disclosure on corporate financial performance is limited, if not altogether absent. In contrast, environmental performance seems to play an important role, and that holds even for high-emitting companies. Overall, our results were consistent with the interpretation that financial markets effectively consider the actual environmental performance of listed companies and, only to a minor extent, the quality of their disclosure.
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