Analyzing the effect of sustainability index on stock value and profitability of firms: A research on the bist 100 firms

Companies are able to create negative social and environmental impacts as a result of their activities to meet social needs. They are taking various initiatives to mitigate these effects and to protect ecological, social and economic order harmony. These initiatives, called sustainability, involve all sorts of interactions with stakeholders and are increasingly involved in the literature. At the same time, financial markets are significantly affected by so called developments. In this context, sustainability indices are created in stock exchanges to give an opportunity for investors in order to evaluate sustainable companies. In Turkey, BIST Sustainability Index is released by Borsa Istanbul A.Ş. to the market. In this study, the change in stock prices and profitability of firms after the inclusion in BIST Sustainability Index are empirically examined. Dataset comprising the period between 2014 and 2016 is used for 42 firms which are listed in the sustainability stock indice. Since our analysis includes both cross section data and time series data, panel data is used in the study. Empirical findings show that inclusion in the sustainability stock indice has no effect on financial performance indicators of companies. Besides, the results performed that listed companies could not provide economic benefits, even though their shares are listed in the sustainability stock index.