Partners of USEPA Climate Leaders: an Event Study on Stock Performance.

ABSTRACT This research utilized an event study method to assess how the stocks of publicly traded companies responded before and after announcing their partnership with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Climate Leaders program. Although the stocks exhibited an average non-significant positive abnormal return of 0.56% on the day of the announcement, the cumulative abnormal returns for the stock prices of the firms for two of the three event windows showed statistically significant negative returns. These results suggest that these firms' public announcements of joining the USEPA Climate Leaders partnership did not have a positive impact on stock performance. While no immediate financial benefit was found in this research, the practices implemented by these firms to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions may still bode well for long-term corporate earnings and attractiveness to investors. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]