To green or not to green: The influence of board characteristics on carbon emissions

We analyze how board characteristics affect a company’s carbon emissions besides further firm-related and cultural variables, using data on over 6,000 companies located in 46 countries for the period 2009–2019. We identify the boards that are more skilled or have a higher share of female members to emit a lower amount of greenhouse gases. Surprisingly, high CSR board efforts show higher carbon emissions. We observe that the importance of time varying effects within a company changed as a consequence of the Paris Agreement in 2015