Browsing by Subject "responsibility"

Responsible investing is a topical subject in financial markets. When both environmental and societal concerns are increasing with population growth and growing demand for scarce resources, interest towards responsibility and sustainability matters have become global. This has created new investment markets of responsible investing. The aim of this thesis is to form a comprehensive analysis of the performance of responsible investments compared to non-responsible investments. The thesis analyses the financial performance, the performance under uncertainty and the volatility of responsible investments. The empirical studies are utilised in the analysis. The thesis also aims to form an understanding of the possible sources and explanations of economics for financially profitable performance of responsible investments by introducing and applying theories of economics and academic studies. The thesis creates a theoretical framework for the research question analysis, with Markowitz’s (1952) modern portfolio theory. The theory indicates that by limiting the investment possibilities to cover the preference of responsible investing, an investor faces a constraint. Since opportunities of diversification decrease, responsible investing portfolios cannot be diversified as normal portfolios and responsible investing portfolios are not considered optimal. The theory indicates that responsible investment portfolios yield a worse expected return with the same risk or higher risk with same expected return compared with the optimal portfolios. When analysing the financial performance of responsible investments, the empirical evidence shows that the positive environmental, social governance (ESG) – corporate financial performance (CFP) correlation is higher than the negative ESG–CFP correlation. In addition, when comparing the performance of responsible indices and traditional indices, there are no significant differences in the gross returns or Sharpe ratios. When analysing the performance under uncertainty, companies with high corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings compared to companies with low CSR ratings, ratings had four to seven percent higher stock returns during the financial crisis period of 2008–2009. In addition, when analysing volatility, the conclusion is that higher ESG rating correlated with lower volatility and the relationship is stronger when market volatility was high. The empirical evidence shows that responsible investing appears to be financially profitable and a rational investing strategy since it does not impose opportunity costs for an investor. In fact, responsible investing can result in good risk-management of a portfolio and yield even better profit expectations than a non-responsible investing strategy. These findings challenge the modern portfolio theory’s indications. Explanations for the research question of why responsible investments perform well, are diverse. When applying the theories of economics, responsibility can be seen as signaling and to bring a competitive advantage for companies that integrate responsibility into the business models. A competitive advantage can occur through lower costs, easier access to capital and through differentiation. The academic studies also recognize the connection between responsibility and trustworthiness as distinct. In addition, responsibility can be seen as anticipating and managing of risks when it comes to possible changes in the institutional environment, for example, in legislation or in regulation framework. Furthermore, an altruistic way of behaviour can be identified among consumers and overall there exists a significant demand for responsibility and responsible products and businesses.

The question of state responsibility in climate change is becoming more and more relevant, as climate change continues to have detrimental effects on both the environment and the people. Sovereign states, however, cannot be forced to act. Sovereignty provides the states with a freedom to stay passive in the fight against climate change. With climate change causing sea level rise and increasing the frequency of natural disasters, the universal human rights stand threatened by the effects. International human rights law does not mention climate change, but if it can be proven that it truly violates human rights, states would have a responsibility to address climate change, at least in the sense that they ought to protect the victims of disasters and slow onset events. International environmental law provides with a responsibility to prevent environmental harm under the no-harm principle. The responsibility to prevent climate change would require that the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change related environmental damage is sufficiently proven. The fact that climate change is partly natural and partly anthropological complicates this issue. The current climate change law does not appropriately address the sharing of responsibility to prevent climate change and compensate for damages caused by it. There are some principles, such as the polluter pays, beneficiary pays and ability to pay principles, which address the responsibility of those who pollute, those who benefit from the pollution, and the different levels of abilities to pay. From them, it follows that developed states ought to have a broader responsibility to pay than developing states, since they have polluted more, benefit more from the pollution, and have the means to pay more. The climate change regime is decades old, but it still fails to properly assign states with responsibilities to prevent climate change. Human rights law and environmental law compensate for some parts climate law lacks in, but the scientific uncertainties make the applicability controversial.

The thesis is a study of the communicated case ‘S.S. and the Others v. Italy’ (application no. 21660/80) of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The application is on behalf of the victims of an incident in which a migrant boat found itself in distress after having left Libya for Europe. The Libyan Coast Guard failed to rescue all of the migrants and allegedly acted negligently, mistreating those they took onboard, and returned them to Libya, exposing them to continued ill-treatment and some of them also to forced return (refoulement) to their countries of origin. Italy is a State Party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and has a bilateral agreement, ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (MoU), with Libya (a non-ECHR State). On the basis of the MoU, Italy funds and equips the Libyan Coast Guard. The agreement can be seen as a means to ‘outsource’ border control and to instruct Libya to intercept migrants before they reach Italy and the European Union (EU), thus effectively circumventing the obligations of the ECHR. The research question is in two parts. First, I ask whether Italy had extraterritorial jurisdiction as stated in Article 1 ECHR, and second, if it had, has Italy violated its positive obligations to secure the applicants’ rights. Jurisdiction is a ‘threshold criterium’ for the Court to study the merits of an application. As for the violations, the thesis focuses on Article 2 (right to life) and Article 3 (prohibition of torture; includes also the prohibition of forced return, or refoulement). The methodology is doctrinal in that the thesis aims to examine critically the central features of the relevant legislation and case law in order to create an arguably correct and sufficiently complete statement on the Court’s reasoning and outcome. The main sources are the provisions of the ECHR itself and the relevant previous case law of the Court, together with a literature review. Additionally, there are third-party interveners’ statements and a video reconstruction of the events. The Court’s questions and information requests to the parties, as attached to the application, are used as a starting point. Besides a hypothesis of the argumentation and the decision of the Court, some estimations are made about what could be the consequences of the decision to such bilateral pacts as the MoU between Italy and Libya, and, in general, to ‘deals’ between the EU Member States and third or transit countries. Finally, the thesis reflects on the eventual repercussions on the topical issue of the EU Commission’s 23.9.2020 proposal for the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, which appears to encourage the Member States to maintain and develop outsourcing practices.

This thesis sets out to investigate what frames are used in the U.S. media to discuss responsibility for climate change. Particularly, the study seeks to identify what frames are used to discuss action for climate change mitigation. The normative framework for analyzing responsibility is established by the social connection model by Iris Marion Young, which presents a forward-looking approach for addressing responsibility for issues of structural injustice. The theoretical framework of this thesis derives from existing literature on climate change, the media, and media framing. The study was conducted using a qualitative method of frame analysis. Data for the study was collected from the digital contents of three popular news media outlets in the United States: CNN, Fox News Channel, and The New York Times. The data consists of news articles that were published online in December 2019. The results of the study indicate that responsibility for climate change mitigation is rarely approached directly in the media. Rather, it is implied through discussions about what actions should be taken. The study identifies four main frames of responsibility. The first frame emphasizes the conflict between the younger and older generations and deems that collective efforts are required to address the situation. The second frame accentuates the political division over the issue of climate change by casting blame upon Asian nations while downplaying the respective responsibility of the United States. Similarly, the efforts of the Democratic party are ridiculed. The third frame emphasizes consumer action through practical efforts but does not promote buying less as a possible solution. Lastly, the study identifies a frame, in which corporate responsibility is approached in two ways: to hold highly polluting industries accountable and to promote green business as a solution. The study finds that the framing employed by Fox News Channel emphasizes the economic disadvantages of climate change mitigation and sees it as an issue of causal responsibility for Asian nations. On the other hand, the findings of the study suggest that the media coverage of the youth protests against climate change often yield notions of collective responsibility and frame the issue of responsibility in a more contextualized setting. The findings of the study support existing research of how media frames the issue of climate change and how polarization affects the framing. Through the application of the social connection model, the findings of this study contribute to the literature of news framing of climate change by demonstrating how the issue of responsibility is framed.