The Impact of ESG Ratings on Firm Innovation: Evidence from a Causal Identification Approach

This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the relevant literature and presents our hypotheses. Section 3 outlines the data and models used in this study. Section 4 presents the empirical results, including baseline regression, four causal identification methods, and robustness checks. Section 5 conducts further analysis to explore the potential mechanisms through which ESG ratings affect innovation and the impact of ESG ratings on future innovation. Finally, in Section 6, we summarize our findings and draw conclusions.