Academic blogs
The PRI Academic blog showcases ESG and sustainable finance-related research in a user-friendly format. The weekly blog is shared with PRI’s investment community of 3,000+ signatories representing over $100 trillion, our Academic Network community and policy makers.
The blogs are predominantly disseminated through our Academic Insights newsletter, as well as through Linkedln and Twitter. You can sign up to receive our newsletter by selecting ‘interested in academia’ in the newsletter preferences section.
If you are interested in writing a blog article, please contact us at academic@unpri.org with the proposed paper you intend to write about. The selection process for the blog is assisted by PRI’s Academic Network Advisory Committee Members Fabrizio Ferraro, IESE Business School and Jason Mitchell, Man Group.
Academic blogs
Financial constraints and corporate environmental policies
By Qiping Xu, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Taehyun Kim, Chun-Ang University
Opioid abuse affects municipal access to capital
By Kimberly Cornaggia, Pennsylvania State University - Department of Finance; John Hund, University of Georgia; Giang Nguyen, Pennsylvania State University - Smeal College of Business and Zihan Ye, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
The underperformance of public institutional investors in infrastructure
By Aleksandar Andonov, University of Amsterdam and CEPR; Roman Kräussl, University of Luxembourg and Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Joshua Rauh, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Hoover Institution, and NBER.
Quota or disclosure? Evidence from corporate board gender diversity policies
By Shirley Lu, Harvard Business School
Complementary or conflicting: How does state intervention interact with green investing to affect corporate environmental behaviour?
By Shipeng Yan and Juan (John) Almandoz, University of Hong Kong; and Fabrizio Ferraro, IESE Business School
Do mandatory climate-related disclosures by financial institutions speed up fossil fuel divestment?
By Benoit Nguyen, Banque de France, and Jean-Stéphane Mésonnier, Banque de France
Sustainability or performance? Ratings and fund managers’ incentives
By Nickolay Gantchev, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, CEPR and ECGI; Mariassunta Giannetti, Stockholm School of Economics, CEPR and ECGI and Rachel Li, Culverhouse College of Business, University of Alabama
ESG incidents and shareholder value
By Simon Glossner, University of Virginia Darden School of Business
Do index funds monitor their portfolio firms?
By Davidson Heath and Matthew Ringgenberg, University of Utah Eccles School of Business; Daniele Macciocchi, University of Miami Herbert Business School and Roni Michaely, Hong Kong University and ECGI.
Is it time to make climate risk disclosures mandatory?
By Julia Anna Bingler, ETH Zurich, Mathias Kraus, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and Markus Leippold, University of Zurich
Shareholders pressing for climate risk disclosures are doing companies a favour
By Caroline Flammer, Boston University; Michael Toffel, and Kala Viswanathan, Harvard Business School
Barriers to net zero: How firms can make or break the green transition
By Ralph De Haas and Helena Schweiger, EBRD Office of the Chief Economist; Ralf Martin and Mirabelle Muûls, Imperial College London
ESG rating disagreements: why is corporate virtue so subjective?
By Dane Christensen, University of Oregon; George Serafeim, Harvard Business School, and Anywhere Sikochi; Harvard Business School
What can we learn from corporate responses to ESG ratings?
By Rieneke Slager, University of Groningen and Jean-Pascal Gond, City, University of London
How disclosing transition and physical climate risks affects credit default swaps
By Julian Koelbel and Markus Leippold, University of Zurich; Jordy Rillaert, SFI Swiss Institute, and Qian Wang, UBS
Global pricing of carbon-transition risk
By Patrick Bolton, Columbia Business School and Marcin Kacperczyk, Imperial College London
Can diversity accelerate the integration of climate-related issues by investors and boards?
By Kristin Bresnahan, Jens Frankenreiter, Brea Hinricks, Eric Talley, Sophie L’Hélias, Nina Hodzic, Julian Nyarko and Sneha Pandya
Leveraging psychological ownership to protect common resources
By Andrea Luangrath, University of Iowa, Joann Peck, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Colleen Kirk, New York Institute of Technology and Suzanne Shu, Cornell University
Climate finance: What does the research say?
Stefano Giglio, Yale School of Management, NBER and CEPR, Bryan Kelly, Yale School of Management, AQR Capital Management and NBER and Johannes Stroebel, New York University, Stern School of Business, NBER, and CEPR
The ESG-innovation disconnect: evidence from green patenting
By Lauren Cohen, L.E. Simmons Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, Umit G. Gurun, Ashbel Smith Professor of Finance and Accounting, University of Texas at Dallas, Quoc Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Finance, DePaul University
Does climate change drive up the cost of government borrowing?
By Hannes Boehm, Halle Institute for Economic Research
How do hurricane shocks impact local public finance dynamics in the US?
By Rhiannon Jerch, Assistant Professor of Economics at Temple University, Matthew E. Kahn, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Economics and Business and Director of JHU’s 21st Century Cities Initiative, Johns Hopkins University and NBER, and Gary C. Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University
Do PRI signatory investors walk the talk?
By Rajna Gibson Brandon (University of Geneva), Simon Glossner (University of Virginia – Darden School of Business), Philipp Krueger (University of Geneva & Swiss Finance Institute), Pedro Matos (University of Virginia – Darden School of Business) and Tom Steffen (Osmosis Investment Management)
Rewriting history II: The (un)predictable past of ESG ratings
Florian Berg (MIT Sloan), Kornelia Fabisik and Zacharias Sautner (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management)
What is blocking the sustainable energy transition in the US? Insights from the Citizens United ruling
By Hanna Niczyporuk, political economy PhD candidate at New York University
How does ESG information affect investors’ decisions?
By Jacquelyn Humphrey, University of Queensland, Shimon Kogan, IDC Herzliya & Wharton, Jacob Sagi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Laura Starks, University of Texas at Austin
Costing jobs or cutting emissions: What is the real impact of Europe’s carbon taxes?
Gilbert E. Metcalf, Department of Economics at Tufts University, and the National Bureau of Economic Research; James H. Stock, Department of Economics at Harvard University, and the National Bureau of Economic Research
Does competition increase corporate social responsibility?
By Wenzhi Ding, Hong Kong University, Ross Levine, University of California, Berkeley, Chen Lin, Hong Kong University, and Wensi Xie, Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Monetary damages – a better measure of sustainability than emissions?
Aniruddh Mohan and Nicholas Z. Muller, Carnegie Mellon University
Clean technology: How the European carbon market is spurring innovation
By Raphael Calel, Georgetown University
Is climate change priced into the options market?
By Emirhan Ilhan, Zacharias Sautner and Grigory Vilkov, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
The big blue: financing sustainable seafood
By Jean-Baptiste Jouffray (Stockholm University), Beatrice Crona (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), Emmy Wassénius (Stockholm University), Jan Bebbington (University of Birmingham Business School) and Bert Scholtens (University of Groningen & University of St Andrews)
Do retail investors continue to invest in sustainability during an economic crisis?
By Robin Döttling, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Sehoon Kim, University of Florida
Can climate change legislation keep its momentum?
By Shaikh Eskander, Kingston University, Sam Fankhauser and Joana Setzer, both Grantham Research Institute
Private equity buyouts and employee health
By Pilar Garcia-Gomez (Erasmus University, Rotterdam), Ernst Maug (University of Mannheim), and Stefan Obernberger (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)
Do private wealth investors care about sustainability?
By Amir Amel-Zadeh, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; Rik Lustermans, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University and ABN AMRO Bank; Mary Pieterse-Bloem, Erasmus School of Economics and Erasmus Research Institute of Management, Erasmus University, and ABN AMRO Bank
Charitable donations and corporate directors – a hidden conflict?
By Ye Cai, Santa Clara University Leavey School of Business; Jin Xu, Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business; and Jun Yang, Indiana University Kelley School of Business
Playing the Trump card: abnormal stock returns and the 2016 election
By Travers Child (CEIBS), Nadia Massoud (Melbourne Business School), Mario Schabus, Yifan Zhou (University of Melbourne)
The challenge of tracking firm-level climate change exposure
By Zacharias Sautner, Laurence van Lent, Grigory Vilkov, Ruishen Zhang (All authors are from Frankfurt School of Finance & Management)
Environmental and social policies pay off when times are tough
By Rui Albuquerque, Carroll School of Management, Boston College, CEPR and ECGI, Yrjo Koskinen, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Shuai Yang, Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, and Chendi Zhang, University of Exeter Business School
Carbon reductions and climate risk – does the Paris Agreement hold the key?
By Tarun Ramadorai, Imperial College London & Federica Zeni, Imperial College London
Corporate social irresponsibility and stock market reactions: the critical role of news media
By Samuel Stäbler, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Tilburg University, and Marc Fischer, Professor of Marketing at the University of Cologne
How equity investors react to mandatory non-financial disclosures
By Jody Grewal, University of Toronto, Edward J. Riedl, Boston University and George Serafeim, Harvard Business School
Does hedge fund activism impact the long-term sustainability of companies? [Updated]
By Mark DesJardine, Pennsylvania State University, and Rodolphe Durand, HEC-Paris
When Harry fired Sally: uncovering the gender punishment gap
By Mark Egan, Harvard University; Gregor Matvos, Northwestern University; Amit Seru, Stanford University
Do local weather conditions resonate more than global climate trends?
By Darwin Choi, Zhenyu Gao, and Wenxi Jiang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School
Top of the class: do SRI-focused endowments perform better?
By George O. Aragon, Arizona State University, Yuxiang Jiang, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Juha Joenvӓӓrӓ, Aalto University School of Business and Cristian Ioan Tiu, University at Buffalo
Do managers boost short-term performance at the expense of long-run value?
By Tomislav Ladika, University of Amsterdam, and Zacharias Sautner, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management and ECGI
Making polluters pay – the problem with limited liability
By Pat Akey, University of Toronto and Ian Appel, Boston College
Can CSR reduce risk and boost valuations?
Rui Albuquerque, Yrjo Koskinen, Chendi Zhang
These blogs are written by PRI staff members and guest contributors. Our goal is to contribute to the broader debate around topical issues and to help showcase some of our research and other work that we undertake in support of our signatories.
Please note that although you can expect to find some posts here that broadly accord with the PRI’s official views, the blog authors write in their individual capacity and there is no “house view”. Nor do the views and opinions expressed on this blog constitute financial or other professional advice.
If you have any questions, please contact us at blog@unpri.org.
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RI Quarterly
The PRI Academic Research programme aims to engage and inform signatories and responsible investment practitioners with academic research that analyses current thinking and future trends, provides practical recommendations and is thought-provoking. RI Quarterly extracts the essentials and distils key findings from research in a clear and concise manner for investment professionals.
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