Carbon Emissions and Corporate Performance in an Emerging Market: Evidence from Thailand

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides empirical evidence on the emissions-performance nexus in an underexplored emerging market, with caution on causal interpretation.

🏢実務担当者:Informs investor stewardship and portfolio management by showing that emission reductions can be efficiently targeted at a few large emitters.

🏛政策担当者:Supports the case for mandatory GHG disclosure in emerging markets by demonstrating the value relevance of emissions data.

Abstract This paper examines the financial relevance of corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for Thai listed firms during 2022--2024, a critical period of intensified transition risks and disclosure mandates. Using firm-reported total GHG emissions matched to firm financials, we first document that emissions are highly concentrated: a small set of issuers accounts for a disproportionate share of aggregate emissions, implying that financed-emissions exposure can be reduced efficiently through targeted engagement and reallocation toward the largest contributors. We then estimate pooled panel regressions with year and sector fixed effects and firm-clustered standard errors, relating profitability (ROA, ROE) and valuation (Tobin's \((Q)\)) to log emissions, firm size, and controls, while allowing the emissions association to vary with market capitalization via a centered interaction. Across outcomes, higher emissions are associated with weaker firm performance and lower valuation; in the baseline specification, the coefficient on \((\log(\mathrm{GHG}))\) is negative and statistically significant for ROA, ROE, and Tobin's \((Q)\). Results are similar when emissions are lagged by one year, and economic-magnitude calculations indicate that a 10% increase in emissions corresponds to modest declines in accounting profitability but a more noticeable reduction in Tobin's \((Q)\), consistent with markets pricing expected transition costs before they fully materialize in contemporaneous earnings. At the same time, causality-oriented diagnostics show that past performance predicts subsequent emissions and that future emissions predict current outcomes, highlighting that the estimates should be interpreted as conditional correlations rather than causal effects. Overall, the evidence suggests that emissions measures carry information relevant to valuation and risk assessment in the Thai equity market and provides practical guidance for investor stewardship and financed-emissions management in a setting where emissions are concentrated among a small number of firms.

• crossref https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9630887/v1first seen 2026-05-28 05:35:32 · last seen 2026-05-31 05:00:17