2026-04-28T19:51:55Zhttps://uvadoc.uva.es/oai/request

oai:uvadoc.uva.es:10324/783132025-12-15T20:02:23Zcom_10324_1147com_10324_931com_10324_894col_10324_1266

ESG, Bank Debt and Firm Value: A Signaling Perspective Fuente Herrero, Gabriel de la Velasco González, María Del Pilar Deuda bancaria Responsabilidad social corporativa CSR ESG Valor de la empresa ODS Teoría de la señalización Objetivos de desarrollo sostenible Producción Científica This paper delves into the influence of bank debt in shaping the relationship between environmental, social, and governance(ESG) performance and a firm's value. As a result of the superior informational and monitoring functions of bank borrowers intheir lending relationships, we argue that a firm's degree of bank debt might signal the genuineness of its ESG performance. Weempirically test this signaling role on a sample of U.S. publicly traded companies over 2010–2018. Our results provide evidencethat bank debt improves the value effect of ESG performance. We find that the signaling effect of bank debt is stronger incompanies with lower tangible collateral, where the need for banks to screen and monitor them is higher. Our findings arerobust to controlling for contextual factors that may affect the signaling relevance of bank debt, such as the visibility andinformational asymmetries as provided by analysts' activity, or the difference between green and brown industries, as well as aseries of alternative econometric specifications, including alternative ESG performance measures, endogeneity tests, and pro-pensity score matching. 2025-10-06T07:25:01Z 2025-10-06T07:25:01Z 2025 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting, 2025, p. 1-27 0954-1314 https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/78313 10.1111/jifm.70002 1 27 Journal of International Financial Management & Accounting 1467-646X eng https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jifm.70002 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ © 2025 The Author(s) Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Wiley SI