Browsing by Author "Czocherra, Joel"
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- Do high ESG scores mitigate crisis impacts? : a difference-in-difference analysis of airline profitability during COVID-19Publication . Czocherra, Joel; Stahl, JörgThe thesis aims to explore the effect of ESG performance on the airline industry with a focus on profitability during the COVID-19 crisis. In order to do so, the thesis uses a difference-in-difference approach to determine how airlines with high ESG ratings affected profitability during the pandemic. Moreover, the analysis includes a global panel data set of 81 airlines from 2017 to 2022. The significant results reveal that the profitability of all airlines in the dataset declined sharply at the beginning of the pandemic. However, the thesis found evidence that treated airline companies experienced a smaller drop in profitability, measured in return on assets. In addition, the results remain significant for several adjusted analyses, such as different cutoff levels for classifying a high ESG score, winsorized data, and a subsample to ensure robustness. However, in the parallel trend analyses, the thesis couldn9t present a clear parallel trend. However, the findings show that the increase in profitability is more pronounced for the treated airline companies, particularly after 2020. These findings thus suggest that high levels of ESG performance might provide a form of protection during an economic downturn or a crisis. This thesis provides supporting evidence to the literature on ESG and its relationship with the profitability of a carbon-intensive industry during an unanticipated event.