Female Equity Analysts and Corporate Environmental and Social Performance

Abstract

Using a sample of over 10,000 sell-side equity analysts from 20052021, we show that there is a positive and significant association between a firm’s female analyst following and its environmental and social (E&S) performance. We further show that after an exogenous drop in female analyst coverage due to broker closures, firms experience a 7% decrease in their E&S scores. Finally, we develop machine learning models to sift through 2.4 million analyst reports and over 120,000 earnings call transcripts and show that female equity analysts are more likely to discuss E&S issues in reports and during calls than their male counterparts.

Keywords: female equity analysts; analyst monitoring; corporate environmental and social performance; natural language processing; data-centric AI; FinBERT; analyst reports; earnings conference calls

JEL Classification: G24; G30; G40