There is increasing difficulty in identifying new plant leaf diseases as a result of environmental change. There is a need to identify the factors influencing the emergence and the increasing incidences of these diseases. Here, we present emerging fungal plant leaf diseases and describe their environmental speciation. We considered the factors controlling for local adaptation associated with environmental speciation. We determined that the advent of emergent fungal leaf diseases is closely connected to environmental speciation. Fungal pathogens targeting the leaves may adversely affect the entire plant body. To mitigate the injury caused by these pathogens, it is necessary to be able to detect and identify them early in the infection process. In this way, their distribution, virulence, incidence, and severity could be attenuated.
We examine whether short sellers, as informed investors, take into consideration corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and disclosure in the areas of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) sustainability in making investment decisions. We find that firms' market value and future financial performance, measured by price per share, return on equity, and return on assets, are lower, whereas operating risk, measured by the standard deviation of return on equity and the standard deviation of return on assets, is higher for firms with low composite ESG scores. We detect a negative association between ESG scores and short selling, indicating that short sellers avoid firms with high ESG scores and tend to target firms with low ESG scores. We conclude that investors consider firms' ESG scores as value relevant in making investment decisions and thus management should integrate CSR into strategic decisions and corporate reporting.
JEL Classifications: G32; M40.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.