Hello!

I am Sahand Davani, a 4th year PhD candidate in Management Sciences - Finance at ESADE Business School.

My research interests lie at the intersection of corporate finance and financial markets, with a focus on how non-financial information influences the financial decisions of firms and other market participants. I am on the 2024-2025 academic job market. 

You can reach me via email at sahand.davani@alumni.esade.edu.

Job Market Paper

The Power of ESG Labels (View on SSRN)

This paper investigates how firms' ESG ratings influence their ownership by institutional investors and their cost of capital. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that everything else being equal, among firms with high MSCI ESG scores, those with better ESG labels attract higher ownership by ESG institutional investors compared to similar firms with worse ESG labels. Conversely, among firms with low MSCI ESG scores, those with worse ESG labels have higher ownership by ESG institutional investors compared to similar firms with better ESG labels. In both cases, higher ownership by ESG institutional investors lowers the firms' perception of their cost of capital, without affecting their implied cost of capital. I argue that this opposite behavior of ESG institutional investors reflect distinct responsible investment strategies that they pursue.