For almost two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has continually challenged economies worldwide. In response, governments have needed to adopt different policies.
In this paper, we:
- Ask whether ESG resilience is the key to a well-managed pandemic such as COVID-19. Using our in-house model, ESG Factor-IN, we make the link between ESG performance and the human casualties of the pandemic.
- Use a simple econometric framework applied to 41 selected economies, to exhibit the negative and significant relationship between the overall Social Performance and Political Effectiveness scores, and the mortality rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Outline analysis which shows that investing in ESG themes has overarching benefits, both for economies and investors. While it results in more preparedness and agility when addressing unpredictable events for economies, good ESG performance also provides security, stability and lower risk for investors.
Note for reader, this paper refers to Beyond Ratings. Beyond Ratings is now known as LSEG Sovereign Sustainability Solutions.