Industry-University-Research Collaboration and Corporate ESG Performance
Description
This study focuses on A-share companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges over the period 2009 to 2024. Although Bloomberg's ESG records extend back to 2006, we begin the sample in 2009, the point at which ESG investing and ESG data coverage in China had matured enough to support firm-level analysis. China's first socially responsible public fund was launched in 2008, after which responsible investment drew growing attention from investors, and Bloomberg introduced its ESG Data Service in 2009, which broadened the systematic ESG coverage of listed firms. The patent data from which we identify IUR collaboration were obtained from the China National Intellectual Property Administration , while ESG performance data were obtained from the Bloomberg database. Additional financial data for listed companies were collected from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research and Wind databases. To ensure data quality, the following firms were excluded from the initial sample: (1) firms with missing data, (2) special treatment companies , and (3) firms in the financial and insurance industries. After applying these filters, the final sample consisted of 11,937 firm-year observations, of which approximately 14% involve IUR collaboration. The extended sample period and this share of IUR observations together provide a broad basis for examining how IUR collaboration relates to corporate ESG performance. To mitigate the influence of outliers, continuous variables were winsorized at the 1% upper and lower levels.