Table 6 reveals summary statistics

Table 6 reveals summary statistics for corporate financial performance variables, andmost of the variables are accounting-based indicators. Overall, the size of the first researchsample is 21,341. The firm with median characteristics in the sample has ROA of 0.041,Debt over Equity (D/E) ratio of 1.164267, interest coverage ratio of 5.76149, total assets ofabout $1.727 billion, and return on invested capital (ROIC) of approximately 9%. In termsof ESG scores, the median sample firm has an environment score of 0.57, social score of0.5825, governance score 0.625, and total ESG score of 0.59. Nevertheless, it is also possibleto identify extreme values in certain accounting-based performance measures. For instance,D/E ratio, interest coverage ratio, and ROIC have very abnormal distribution.Table 7 shows the descriptive statistics used to assess the ESG–credit rating relationship. Please note that during the sample data structure for the ESG–credit ratingrelationship, the number of observations decreased by 10,722 compared to the first dataset,which was used to analyze the ESG–ROA relationship. Due to the availability of dataand lack of information disclosure, the number of observations decreased by half. Inthis sample set, the median firm has a credit rating of 15 or BBB-, D/E ratio of 1.628,interest coverage ratio of 4.58, total assets of approximately $4.117 billion, and ROIC ofapproximately 10%. In terms of ESG scores, the median firm possesses an environmentscore of 0.571429, social score of 0.59, governance score of 0.625, and total ESG score of0.586865. Based on the initial finding, it is possible to observe potential issues related tothe proposed ESG score calculation method. Apart from the environmental score, the ESGscores are somewhat well-distributed (based on their mean, standard deviation, skewness,and kurtosis statistics). However, the environmental scores from both sample sets havevery concentrated distribution near the mean/median. In particular, the first and thirdquantile for the calculated environmental score are identical.