Sustainability & ESG Research Services
Sustainability and ESG research spans environmental economics, green finance, climate risk, CSR, and corporate environmental performance—fields where the questions are empirical and the methods demanding. MAS Research brings the statistical and econometric methods these questions require, matched to the way sustainability data actually behaves.
Sustainability and ESG research applies rigorous quantitative methods to questions about environmental, social, and governance performance—such as whether ESG affects firm value, how emissions relate to growth, or whether a green policy worked. Because the data are typically panels of firms or countries over time, with long-run relationships and non-random treatment, the field relies heavily on panel econometrics, cointegration, and causal-inference designs.
Sustainability & ESG as a research domain
Sustainability and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) research has grown from a niche into one of the most active areas of management, economics, and finance scholarship. It spans a wide family of fields—environmental and energy economics, climate economics and climate finance, green finance and green innovation, corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainable business models and supply chains, and sustainability and ESG reporting—united by a common empirical character: the questions are about relationships, effects, and performance over time, and the answers have to survive serious methodological scrutiny.
What makes the domain methodologically demanding is the shape of the data. Sustainability questions are typically studied with panels of firms or countries observed over many years; the series often trend and share long-run relationships (emissions, energy use, output); treatment is almost never randomised (firms choose ESG strategies; countries choose policies); and effects frequently differ across the distribution (ESG may matter more for some firms than others). Each of these features points to a specific methodological response—which is where matching the method to the question matters most.
How we work in this domain
Our role is to bring the right quantitative method to a sustainability or ESG research question and to execute it to a publishable standard. We work with scholars, doctoral researchers, and research teams in business schools, economics departments, and policy institutes—on individual studies, dissertation chapters, and larger research programmes.
The through-line is methodological fit. A question about the long-run link between emissions and growth is a cointegration problem; a question about whether ESG causes firm value is an endogeneity problem; a question about whether a carbon policy worked is a policy-evaluation problem. Below we map the domain’s recurring questions to the methods that answer them—each linking to the dedicated service where we set out that method in full.
Matching sustainability questions to methods
The recurring empirical questions in sustainability and ESG research, and the methods best suited to each. Every method links to its dedicated service page.
| Research question | Why it’s hard | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Do emissions, energy, and growth share a long-run relationship? | Trending, non-stationary series; spurious-regression risk | ARDL & cointegration |
| The same, across many countries with common shocks? | Cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity across countries | Panel time-series |
| Does ESG performance affect firm value or risk? | Firms self-select into ESG; reverse causality and confounding | Panel data & IV |
| Did a carbon tax, regulation, or green programme work? | Non-random adoption; need a credible counterfactual | Difference-in-differences |
| One country adopted a policy—what was its effect? | A single treated unit; no clean comparison group | Synthetic control |
| Does the effect differ for high- vs low-emitting firms? | The mean effect hides distributional differences | Panel quantile |
| What drives ESG disclosure or green-innovation intentions? | Latent constructs measured by survey items | PLS-SEM |
| What does the evidence across many studies say overall? | Many studies, mixed findings, varying contexts | Meta-analysis |
Across the sustainability & ESG landscape
We support quantitative research across the breadth of the domain—each sub-field tending to lean on a characteristic set of methods.
Environmental & Energy Economics
Emissions, energy demand, and growth relationships—often long-run and country-panel questions suited to cointegration and panel time-series methods.
Climate Economics & Climate Risk
Climate–economy relationships and the exposure of firms and portfolios to climate risk, drawing on panel and time-series econometrics.
Green & Climate Finance
Green bonds, sustainable investment, and the pricing of climate risk—financial-econometrics and panel questions.
ESG & Corporate Performance
Whether and how ESG relates to firm value, risk, and outcomes—firm-panel questions where endogeneity is central.
CSR & Sustainable Business
Corporate social responsibility, sustainable business models, and supply chains—often survey-based latent-construct research.
Environmental Policy & Reporting
Evaluating environmental policies and analysing sustainability/ESG disclosure—policy-evaluation and content-analytic questions.
From question to publishable result
We start from your research question and data, and advise on the design before any estimation—because in this domain the credibility of a finding rests on matching the method to the data’s structure (non-stationarity, cross-sectional dependence, endogeneity, non-random policy adoption). We then execute the analysis to current standards, with the diagnostics and robustness checks reviewers in sustainability and economics journals expect.
Whether you are writing a single paper, a dissertation chapter, or running a larger programme, we provide the econometric and statistical work—estimation, testing, benchmarking, and clear interpretation—alongside reproducible code and analysis-ready files where appropriate and permitted. Our publication support helps carry the analysis through peer review.
In ESG research, the method has to fit the data, not the fashion. Trending series need cointegration, not naive regression; self-selected ESG needs a causal design, not a correlation; single-country policies need synthetic control, not a simple before/after. Matching the two is what makes a finding publishable.
Who we work with
Doctoral researchers and faculty in business schools, economics and finance departments, and policy institutes; sustainability and energy research centres; and research teams needing methodological depth for ESG, climate, and environmental studies—across single studies and multi-paper programmes.
Sustainability & ESG research: common questions
Working on a sustainability or ESG study?
Tell us the question and the data, and we will match it to the right method—cointegration, panel econometrics, a causal design, or SEM—and execute it to a standard that stands up in review.