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In a context where European stock prices have been trending upwards, one of the main concerns is that stocks perceived as more sustainable from an environmental, social and governance (ESG) perspective could be particularly exposed to exuberance. To shed some light on the magnitude of the deviation of stock prices from fundamentals we apply a Markov-switching augmented version of the present-value model. Using monthly data on the European stock market from 2005 to 2022, our model suggests that at the beginning of 2022 the non-fundamental component was about one fourth of the total price. When looking at particular market segments, the model shows that green and ESG stocks behave broadly in line with the market. However, in recent years ESG stocks have shown a significant, though small, disconnect from the market. These findings suggest that investor preferences are shifting towards sustainability, while not posing immediate risks to market stability.

This paper uses a stylized simulation model to assess the potential impact of transition risk on banks' balance sheets and establishes a basis for calibrating relevant macro-prudential instruments. We show that even in the short run, a fire-sale mechanism could amplify an initially contained shock on highcarbon assets into a systemic crisis with significant losses for the EU banking sector. We calculate that an additional capital buer of 0.5% RWA on average would be sucient to protect the system. Moreover, under an orderly transition, the decrease in banks' transition risk exposure due to the greening of the economy would reduce the eect of a fire-sale by a factor of 10.

How financial investors may react to policy events related to sustainability and climate change mitigation in particular, is a key question with implications for sustainable finance and financial stability. We address this question by carrying out a multi-period difference-in-difference approach on a confidential database of securities holdings of the European Central Bank, and we provide evidence of several effects related to the Paris Agreement. In aggregate, investors reduced their exposure to carbon-intensive assets in response to the agreement, and the trend reverted after the US withdrawal announcement. However, the reaction varies across categories and geographies of the securities holders, their ownership size, and the emissions of owned firms. In particular, transition risk has been taken up by less regulated financial institutions and the BRIC countries. Our results highlight that the redirection of global financial flows towards climate action requires clear and unanimous signals from the global community of policy makers.

This paper studies the evolution of the greenium, i.e. a risk premium linked to firms' greenness and environmental transparency, based on individual stock returns. We estimate an asset pricing model with time-varying risk premia, where the greenium is associated to a priced 'greenness and transparency' factor, which considers both companies' greenhouse gas emissions and the quality of their environmental disclosures. We show that investors in the European equity market tend to accept lower returns, ceteris paribus, to hold greener and more transparent assets when the shift of the economy towards low-carbon becomes more credible. This happened after the Paris Agreement, the first Global Climate Strike and the announcement of the EU Green Deal. Signals going in the opposite direction, such as the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, increasing fossil fuel prices and more bad news about climate change, are associated with increases in the greenium.

This study provides evidence on the existence of a negative Greenium, i.e. a risk premium linked to firms' greenness and environmental transparency, based on European individual stock returns. We define a priced `greenness and transparency' factor based on companies' greenhouse gas emissions and the quality of their environmental disclosures. Based on this factor, we offer a tool to assess the exposure of a portfolio to the risk associated with the low-carbon transition, and hedge against it. We estimate that in a stressed scenario where greener and more transparent firms very much outperform brown stocks, there would be losses at the global level, including for European large banks, should investors fail to price climate-transition risks. These results call for the introduction of climate stress tests for systemically important financial institutions., JRC.B.1-Finance and Economy

We analyse micro and macro drivers of coverage ratios, as well as of their components, in a cross-country sample of European banks. Among the former, we find that credit risk variables, including forward-looking indicators, are the most relevant bank-specific factors explaining bank coverage ratios, together with the level of capitalization in high-NPL banks. Among the latter, coverage ratios increase with GDP growth, suggesting they behave countercyclically, more stringent macro-prudential policies, and deeper NPL secondary markets. Finally, we find evidence of peer imitation behaviour in banks with coverage ratios below the country average., JRC.B.1-Finance and Economy