1. ESG Investment

ESG integrates the three factors of environment, social, and governance. Unlike traditional investment, ESG investment should reflect the company’s efforts on ESG issues, which comprise non-financial information, in their investment decisions. As many people have come to believe that a company’s ESG efforts represent its long-term growth, ESG investment has grown significantly in terms of financial returns. However, the history of ESG investment is not long. Therefore, it is doubtful whether each stakeholder’s information is efficiently reflected in the stock prices of the company, whose stakeholders are multiplexed and diversified stakeholders due to its hugeness, globality, and complexity. In other words, two questions remain regarding whether the total utility of stakeholders may not have been maximized and whether there is room for improving investment performance from the perspective of ESG issues. However, in the distant future, ESG information, which affects corporate value, will be properly reflected in the stock price. As a result, ESG investment might become defined as a real investment, and companies’ ESG efforts might become more efficient. The above motivates us to empirically analyze ESG investment, and we propose several directions.