Are ESG stocks safe-haven during COVID-19?

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate safe-haven properties of environmental, social and governance (ESG) stocks in global and emerging ESG stock markets during the times of COVID-19 so that portfolio managers and equity market investors could decide to use ESG stocks in their portfolio hedging strategies during times of health and market crisis similar to COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The study uses a wavelet coherence framework on four major ESG stock indices from global and emerging stock markets, and two proxies of COVID-19 fear over the period from 5 February 2020 to 18 March 2021. Findings The results of the study show a positive co-movement of the global COVID-19 fear index (GFI) with ESG stock indices on the frequency band of 32 to 64 days, which confirms hedging and safe-haven properties of ESG stocks using the health fear proxy of COVID-19. However, the relationship between all indices and GFI is mixed and inconclusive on a frequency of 0–8 days. Further, the findings do not support the safe-haven characteristics of ESG indices using the market fear proxy (IDEMV index) of COVID-19. The robustness analysis using the CBOE VIX as a proxy of market fear supports that ESG indices do not possess safe-haven properties. The results of the study conclude that the safe-haven properties of ESG indices during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is contingent upon the proxy of COVID-19 fear. Practical implications The findings have important implications for the equity investors and assetty managers to improve their portfolio performance by including ESG stocks in their portfolio choice during the COVID-19 pandemic and similar health crisis. However, their investment decisions could be affected by the choice of COVID-19 proxy. Originality/value The authors believe in the originality of the paper due to following reasons. First, to the best of the knowledge, this is the first study investigating the safe-haven properties of ESG stocks. Second, the authors use both health fear (GFI) and market fear (IDEMV index) proxies of COVID-19 to compare whether safe-haven properties are characterized by health fear or market fear due to COVID-19. Finally, the authors use the wavelet coherency framework, which not only takes both time and frequency dimensions of the data into account but also remains unaffected by data stationarity and size issues.