arbiter
JournalsPricingAccount

Does ESG Affect Firms’ Borrowing Cost? Evidence from an Emerging Market

Anil Kumar & Nikita

Journal of Business Thought2025https://doi.org/10.18311/jbt/2025/51309article
ABDC C
Weight
0.50

What the paper says

This study investigates the relationship between Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) disclosure scores and theCost of Debt (CoD) of Indian companies. By investigating whether companies with better ESG disclosure ratings havelower borrowing costs, this study seeks to add to the expanding body of information. Drawing on a comprehensive datasetcovering nine years (2014-2022) and the Nifty 500 index as the specified study domain, the findings reveal a negative andstatistically significant relationship between ESG scores and the CoD, suggesting that firms with robust ESG practices tendto access cheaper debt financing. The study also highlights the significant mediating impact of firm size and the presenceof women on boards on the relationship between ESG and the debt financing cost of Indian companies.

Open paper page →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18311/jbt/2025/51309

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{anil2025,
  title        = {{Does ESG Affect Firms’ Borrowing Cost? Evidence from an Emerging Market}},
  author       = {Anil Kumar & Nikita},
  journal      = {Journal of Business Thought},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.18311/jbt/2025/51309},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

Does ESG Affect Firms’ Borrowing Cost? Evidence from an Emerging Market

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.