Zattoni, AlessandroAmaro, Ana PaulaMaria, Isabella LeoneZappala, Riccardo2021-03-262021-03-262020-07-162020-07-16http://hdl.handle.net/10362/114486In this paper we investigate how significant is top executives’ role in shaping company’s attitude toward Environmental, Social and Governance issues. Our study specifically focused on CEO’s personal and professional characteristics: Age, Nationality, Level of Education, prior Environmental and Social Expertise. We tested our models on the 50 biggest European companies (EURO STOXX 50index) and the 50 biggest US companies (STOXX USA 50index). Our findings support the idea that younger CEOs tend to achieve higher ESG ratings for their companies, and similarly European CEO’s outperform their U.S.’s colleagues in terms of MSCI ESG company’s rating. However, we were not able to demonstrate the existence of a significant correlation between CEOs’ level of education and company’s ESG score using our data. Additionally, CEOs’ prior environmental and social expertise did not positively correlate to the MSCI ESG index of the company.engCorporateStrategyStatisticsManagementCeoEsgPoliciesCorrelationmaster thesis202609960