A new brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College says that environmental, social and governance (ESG) screening of investments in public pension plans can have a negative impact on returns and fiduciary goals, making ESG investing unsuitable for those plans.
The brief by Alice Munnell and Anqi Chen said that public pension funds ventured into ESG investing in the 1970s with a focus on divesting from apartheid South Africa, later turning to “terror-free” investing and divestiture from gun manufacturers and most recently targeting fossil fuels because of climate change concerns.
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