Corporate Transition to Sustainable Low-Carbon Development as a Factor of Market Benchmarks’ Dynamics

Corporate transition to sustainable low-carbon development has an increasingly significant impact on all areas of modern society, including financial markets. The dynamics of market indicators begins to be influenced by new determinants, which defined the research purpose – to assess the impact of factors reflecting the corporate transition to sustainable low-carbon development on market benchmarks. The connection of individual companies’ indicators with the introduction of new cost and investment management practices should mean that market benchmarks start depending on new factors. Verification of this assumption deserves independent attention being commonly accepted by default in existing studies. Given this gap, we tested if the factors associated with the corporate transition to sustainable low-carbon development have a significant influence on a market benchmarks. Accordingly, the indices of the largest emerging market in Eastern Europe (Moscow Exchange IMOEX and RTSI) were alternately applied as market benchmarks. Corresponding hypotheses were tested in two stages: before the adoption of the UN sustainable development goals and the Paris climate agreement (from 2012 to 2015) and after the introduction of these global initiatives (from 2016 to 2021). The research showed that several factors associated with corporate transition to a sustainable low-carbon development (the Russian Responsibility and Openness Index (MRRT), the European ESG Index (FTSE4Good EB), futures contracts for EU carbon units and natural gas) have a significant impact on market benchmarks. Noteworthy, in the period after 2015, the relative importance of these factors increases.