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Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors are increasingly analysed to identify the risks and opportunities in contemporary economies. The banking sector influences the whole economy through the credit channel and balances its stability. The interplay of these elements motivated our main question, whether ESG scores impact European financial stability, measured for the banking sector. To this aim, we employ the cross-quantilogram methodology, which explores dependences at all levels of the distributions of two random variables. To determine the quantile dependence, we resort to methods of measuring systemic risk (Marginal Expected Shortfall—MES, CoVaR, and ΔCoVaR) for all commercial banks listed on European stock exchanges. While our approach provides a dashboard for analysis of the dependence of financial stability on ESG pillars, our findings indicate that such a connection is valid and cannot be identified with standard approaches that explore average distribution levels. We also document the differences in these impacts across the ESG pillars.

In this article, we aim to study systemic risk spillovers for European energy companies and to determine the spillover network of the energy sector with other economic sectors. To examine the spillovers within the energy sector, we employ three systemic risk measures. We then embed the results of these models into a Diebold–Yilmaz framework. Moreover, we consider an entropy procedure to extract a Bayesian formulation of its systemic risk spillover. This allows us to determine which company in our sample contributes the most to systemic risk, which company is the most vulnerable to systemic risk, and the place of the energy sector within risk networks. Our results reveal the fact that all companies manifest enhanced spillovers during 2008, early 2009, and 2020. These episodes are associated with the dynamics of the global financial crisis and the pandemic crisis. We notice that specific companies are risk drivers in the sector in both times of market turbulence and calm. Lastly, we observe that several economic sectors such as banks, capital goods, consumer services, and diversified financials generate relevant spillovers towards the energy sector.

Public procurement is considered an important driver of an economy and has a considerable power in orienting the market, including toward environmental protection policies and strategies. This study examines the green public procurement practiced at the level of local Romanian authorities with the aim of understanding the real context by highlighting the mix between what is required and/or expected from local authorities and what is actually happening in terms of green public procurement. The research is based on the results of an online survey conducted from 16 August 2019 to 18 September 2019. The research results show that green procurement is not a subject approached in many administrative units; however, it appears that environmental protection in the context of public procurement is considered important. In line with other research, our results enrich the current knowledge on green procurement practices at the local government level and indicate that increased regulatory pressure for green public procurement may lead to market development and innovation for green goods and services.