Title: ESG Performance and Capital Market Survival: Evidence from Foreign Firms’ Delisting on U.S. Stock Exchanges
Speaker: Yi Li (University of Sydney Business School)
Time: 10:00 (Friday), November 28th, 2025
Venue: Onlline Meeting
Language: Chinese/English
ABSTRACT:
Drawing on the institutional literature as it relates to liability of foreignness and strategies to overcome those liabilities via legitimacy-enhancing strategies, we suggest that ESG performance bestows legitimacy upon foreign firms and enhances their prospects for survival. We also investigate two country-level factors that moderate the effect of ESG performance on capital market survival: the political affinity and FDI interdependence of the home and host country. High political affinity signifies aligned national interests and thus reduces perceived regulative distance and associated political risks and legitimacy concerns faced by foreign firms and therefore lessens the benefits of higher sustainability performance. Higher levels of FDI interdependence between host and home country enhances the cognitive legitimacy of a foreign firm, reducing the benefits of ESG performance as a legitimacy signal. We test our intuition on a sample of 829 foreign firms that were listed on U.S. stock exchanges between 2010 and 2021 and find support for our hypotheses.
SHORT BIOGRAPHY:
Dr. Yi Li （PhD, FRSA, FHEA） is an Associate Professor in Discipline of International Business, at the University of Sydney Business School. His research interests include internationalization of resource-constrained firms, geopolitical tension in international business, AI & international business strategy. His work has been published or forthcoming in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Journal of World Business, Regional Studies, Global Strategy Journal, International Business Review, Management International Review, Journal of Business Research and others. As the Winner of Early Career Researcher Award in the University of Sydney Business School, He has won several national and international competitive research grants. He has been a Fellow of the Higher Educational Academy (FHEA) since 2022. In 2023, he won the Young Researcher Award in the International Engineering and Technology Institute (IETI). He currently serves as Deputy Head of Discipline in Research Education, Deputy Director in Emerging Markets Research Group, Associate Editor for Communication in Journal of International Management (ABDC: A), Associate Editor of Asia Pacific Journal of Management (ABDC: A), Associate Editor of Nature: Humanities & Social Science Communication (SSCI Q1), and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Chinese Management Studies (ABDC Ranked, SSCI Indexed).