Divestment from fossil fuel companies could help align financial flows with climate targets and reduce the related risk exposure of investors. Yet, investors reach different conclusions whether to divest. In this article, we derive hypotheses for financial and non-financial divestment motives to explore the determinants of divestment. Using a newly compiled data set on the 1000 largest European pension funds, we find that 129, or 13%, of these funds, representing USD 2.6 trillion in assets under management (33%), have divested from fossil fuels. Most of these funds (n = 75, AUM = USD 2.1 trillion) have committed to divesting from coal only, while some have committed to divest from all fossil fuels (n = 16, AUM = USD 109 billion). We find that divestment is more likely among larger and publicly owned pension funds. Among privately owned pension funds, we find that open funds competing for clients are more likely to divest compared with company funds restricted to employees. Hence, we identify size, ownership and market competition as key determinants for divestment decisions. Furthermore, we find weaker evidence for sectoral differences (e.g., higher likelihood in financial sector), albeit independent of carbon intensities, and a positive effect of climate policy stringency.

从化石燃料公司撤资有助于使资金流动与气候目标保持一致，并降低投资者的相关风险敞口。然而，投资者对是否撤资达成了不同的结论。在本文中，我们推导出金融和非金融撤资动机的假设，以探讨撤资的决定因素。使用最新编制的 1000 家欧洲最大养老基金的数据集，我们发现这些基金中有 129 家，即 13%，管理着 2.6 万亿美元的资产（33%），已经从化石燃料中剥离出来。这些基金中的大多数（n  = 75，AUM = 2.1 万亿美元）承诺仅从煤炭中剥离，而一些则承诺从所有化石燃料中剥离（n = 16，资产管理规模 = 1090 亿美元）。我们发现，在规模较大的公有养老基金中，撤资的可能性更大。在私有养老基金中，我们发现与仅限于员工的公司基金相比，竞争客户的开放式基金更有可能撤资。因此，我们将规模、所有权和市场竞争确定为撤资决策的关键决定因素。此外，我们发现部门差异的证据较弱（例如，金融部门的可能性更高），尽管与碳强度无关，并且气候政策严格有积极影响。