Methodological Issues in Analyzing Financial Development in the Context of ESG

The sustainable development goals formulated by the UN are embodied in various spheres of human life and economic activity. In finance, this movement has led to the emergence of a sustainable finance market in recent years. Its boundaries are set by the uniqueness of the tools and products of this market and the formation of its own rules and standards. The purpose of this study is to develop approaches to assess the development of the sustainable finance market and integrate indicators characterizing the state of individual segments of this market into the system of financial development indicators promoted by the World Bank. To achieve this goal, the paper analyzes the structure and scope of the sustainable finance market, examines the experience of monitoring the state and dynamics of this market in different aspects, and clarifies the place of existing and proposed indicators in the system of financial development metrics. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the modern practice of monitoring and analyzing the sustainable finance market is not fully adapted to the purposes of both country-based and cross-country analysis, since it is not systematized and relies mainly on absolute indicators. The authors propose the development of a methodology for analyzing the sustainable finance market by complementing existing approaches and preferentially using structure indicators and GDP-weighted indicators. Taking into account these proposals, the work presents a modernized system of financial development indicators of 5×4 dimensions, which is intended to replace the 5×2 matrix used so far in the literature on financial development. This will make it possible to more systematically accumulate information on the functioning of the sustainable finance market and use it, among other things, to find answers to the questions regarding the contribution of this market to financial development and the effects of its development on inclusive economic growth.

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