IMAP seeks to foster collaboration on its research projects both across academic departments, and between academics and industry professionals. One way we encourage these interactions is via our monthly lunch seminars. Those who join, either in-person or online, should not expect to simply watch anonymously, but rather engage in the discussion and meet others interested in similar topics.
What: A monthly lunchtime presentation and discussion of IMAP-relevant research Who: Academics and industry professionals Why: To promote interdisciplinary exchange of ideas around ESG challenges and ensure academic research is informed by and relevant to industry Where: In-person on the BU campus and via Zoom
We hope industry affiliates in the Boston area will join us in-person.
Upcoming Seminars
June 12, 2025 – Should Anesthetics with Enormous Global Warming Potentials be Banned?
Since the first public use of anesthesia, on 16 October 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital, advances in pharmacology have given anesthesiologists an ever-widening array of chemical tools. The most recent of these are fluorinated ethers, so-called F-gases, a prominent example being desflurane (C3H2F6O). Among its other properties, desflurane is a powerful greenhouse gas. If scored by its twenty-year Global Warming Potential, GWP-20, it is 7020 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. As a result of this fact alone, it has been banned from use in the UK National Health Service, and as of 2026 will be strongly discouraged from use in the European Union. Although the Global Warming Potential is widely cited in non-specialist literature (including the anesthesiology literature), in policy circles, and in the mass media, it is viewed with skepticism in the climate science community. According to Article 2 of the Paris Agreement, the internationally accepted standard for the measure of climate change is “the increase in the global average temperature.”
We assess the climate hazard attending the use of desflurane by computing the effect of its use, at scale, on global average temperature and compare it to its GWP-derived “CO2-equivalent.” Because carbon dioxide has an atmospheric lifetime of tens of thousands of years, its emissions linger in the atmosphere contributing to long-term warming. In contrast, desflurane has an atmospheric lifetime of fourteen years. Even if desflurane were used indefinitely in 300 million surgical procedures per year (the current worldwide annual total) its effect on global average temperature would never exceed 0.002°C, much smaller than the natural variation of temperature due to variations of solar insolation.
We conclude GWP is a misleading metric when quantifying the climate effects of short-lived climate pollutants such as desflurane. Calculations of global average temperature, as per the Paris Agreement, is a far superior method of weighing the influence of greenhouse gases on climate.
September 25 –The Relevance to Investors of Greenhouse Gas Methane Emissions
The Relevance to Investors of Greenhouse Gas Methane Emissions
While much evidence identifies the human and environmental impacts of excessive methane gas (CH4), climate scientists and world bodies have yet to explore whether financial markets price these impacts. This question requires investigation because mounting CH4 —the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2)—released into the atmosphere makes it increasingly unlikely that the Paris emission targets set in 2016 will be met to avoid the irreversible impacts of global warming. Financial markets play a crucial role in reducing global warming because investors can penalize emitter firms today as a reduction in market value for the costs of their future emissions.
Based on firm-level measures of industrial CH4 and CO2 mandatorily reported by U.S. firms to the EPA from 2010 to 2022, we find that the equity market penalizes firms for high levels of CH4 by imposing a share price discount that is at least six times higher than the share price discount for CO2 emissions. We also find that the equity market penalty increased significantly for firms supporting the 2016 EPA rules to curb and control CH4 releases after a panel of judges abolished them later that year. Our findings support the science of global warming that markets should penalize firms’ CH4 emissions more than an equivalent amount of CO2. We estimate the penalty assessed by investors for CH4 ranges from approximately 9.3 percent of market capitalization for smaller firms (25%-tile) to 0.8 percent for larger firms (75%-tile). This penalty aligns with climate scientists’ estimates of the equity-weighted social cost of methane.
Estelle Sun, Associate Professor of Accounting at BU’s Questrom School of Business will present.
Past Seminars
April 17, 2025 – The Puzzle of Sustainable Investment
The Puzzle of Sustainable Investment
Many investors want to use their financial portfolios to change how firms are run. Unfortunately, there is much muddled thinking here and plenty of unreasonable expectations. We will discuss the channels through which investors have impact and use data and case studies to assess its magnitude.
Our speaker was Lukasz Pomorski, a Portfolio Manager and a Senior Vice President with Acadian Asset Management.
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February 13, 2025 – Geospatial Finance: Foundations for Sustainable Investment and Environmental Insight
Geospatial Finance: Foundations for Sustainable Investment and Environmental Insight
Geospatial finance combines cutting-edge geospatial data from satellites, drones, and IoT sensors with AI and cloud computing to deliver powerful ESG insights. This emerging field helps evaluate the environmental impact of corporate actions, uncover sustainable investment opportunities, and enhance climate risk analysis. By transforming regulatory reporting and sustainability assessments, geospatial finance is shaping the future of responsible investing.
Suchi Gopal, Professor of Earth & Environment at BU’s College of Arts & Sciences will present.
January 30, 2025 – Energy Investment Tax Credits & Environmental Outcomes: Evidence from Electric Utilities
Energy Investment Tax Credits
The Investment Tax Credit (“ITC”) is an essential part of U.S. policymakers’ strategy to encourage investment in clean energy. We investigate the effect of Investment Tax Credits on firms’ electricity generation and emissions with a sample of electric utilities from 2001-2022. Using a stacked cohort difference-in-differences design, we find that firms generate less electricity from renewable sources than peer firms after claiming ITC, a roughly 2% decrease in renewable electricity generated relative to pre-ITC generation levels. This effect appears driven by substituting away from wind and other renewable sources to solar, consistent with selective technology provisions in the ITC. We also observe ITC firms employ 7% more people following initial adoption and observe similar patterns as firms claim more ITCs. Finally, we observe declines in ESG scores following ITC usage. Our analyses suggest that selective technology provisions of the ITC may have hampered its goal of growing renewable electricity generation.
Jesse Chan of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business presented.
December 12, 2024 – Making ESG Research More Trustworthy
Making ESG Research More Trustworthy
Replications of five of the most important ESG studies have uncovered evidence challenging their methods, logic, or findings. More replications and analyses are ongoing. Professor Andy King will describe his replication of “The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance,” by Eccles, Ioannou, and Serafeim. He will also discuss the status of replications of other influential ESG studies. There will be time for discussion about how ESG research can be made more trustworthy.
Andrew King of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business presented.
November 21, 2024 – Climate Solutions, Transition Risk, and Stock Returns
Climate Solutions, Transition Risk, and Stock Returns
Professor Eddie Riedl discussed his paper outlining a novel approach to assessing business climate transition risk: i.e., the risks to firms in a transition to a low carbon economy. Prior work considers transition risk primarily through the lens of negative outcomes, such as increased costs due to more regulated carbon emissions. This paper takes an alternative and complementary perspective. It uses a unique textual analysis approach to identify firms having business opportunities reflected in “climate solutions:” that is, products and services that develop or deploy technologies in a transition to a low-carbon economy. The work demonstrates that firms having high exposure to climate solutions provide a hedge to equity investors against transition risk. Multiple approaches confirm this inference: for instance, high climate solution firms exhibit lower expected stock returns, higher current market valuations, and positive (negative) stock market reactions to climate-related events that signal increased (decreased) transition risk.
Eddie Riedl of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business presented.
September 26, 2024 – The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios
The Emperor's New Climate Scenarios
Climate-scenario modeling is an important tool used by financial services to investigate how different combinations of risks could impact the future solvency of a financial entity and what action could be taken to mitigate those risks. Our research shows that current climate-scenario modeling excludes many of the most severe impacts we can expect from climate change, including tipping points and second order impacts. (Please see our report, The Emperor’s New Climate Scenariosand its follow-up, Climate Scorpion – The Sting is in the Tail.) The consequence of this is that the results emerging from the models are far too benign, even implausible in some cases. It’s as if we are modeling the scenario of the Titanic hitting an iceberg but excluding from the impacts the possibility that the ship could sink, with two thirds of the souls on board perishing. This means the usefulness of the current scenarios is limited, as they do not communicate the level of risk adequately. More dangerously, the artificially benign results can easily serve as an excuse for delaying action, as consumers of these results, such as policymakers and business leaders, may reasonably believe the results to adequately capture the risks. Our report highlights areas of challenge, as well as providing ideas on ways to develop scenario techniques to better capture the severe risks we face. We hope this more realistic assessment of risk will act to further catalyze the collaboration and investment into solutions that is required to ensure these risks don’t materialize.
Sandy Trust of the UK’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFOA) Council presented, with an introduction by Madison Condon, of BU School of Law.
June 13, 2024 – Mitigation of Shipping CO2 Emissions
Mitigation of Shipping CO2 Emissions
Neither international treaties nor domestic policies currently control carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from international shipping. This presentation explores how these emissions could be included in national carbon budgets, where five different options could be used based on the location of industry actors and ships. The analysis shows that a clear majority of CO2 emissions would be distributed to ten countries under each option; however, the top ten countries vary across allocation options and the amount of CO2 emissions allotted to individual countries could increase their carbon budgets a thousandfold or more. The presentation will build on this article by H. Selin et al. 2021, Mitigation of CO2 Emissions From International Shipping Through National Allocation, Environmental Research Letters 16: 045009.
Henrik Selin of the BU Pardee School of Global Studies presented.
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You can also watch an animated 3-minute video about this talk here:
April 4, 2024 – Common Environmental Scoring of Fossil Fuels for Foreign Trade and Investment Decisions
Common Environmental Scoring of Fossil Fuels for Foreign Trade and Investment Decisions
Investment communities are searching for reliable sources of data in the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) spheres. These data can aid wise allocation of capital, to the benefit of individual market participants and the economy as a whole. However, difficulties in finding and weighing ESG data have, to a certain extent, cast doubt on the entire ESG scoring enterprise. A similar problem is beginning to infect international trade. Globally important trading blocs, including the European Union, are seeking to reduce embodied greenhouse gas emissions across the supply chains of internationally traded commodities. However, there are at present no generally accepted standards for the measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) of embodied greenhouse gases. I argue here that the adoption of common MRV standards in the European Union and the United States would benefit international trade in general, perhaps U.S. fossil fuel exporters in particular, and investment communities at large. This talk will focus on the efforts of the European Union to score natural gas imports with the example of methane, the second most important greenhouse gas.
Robert L. Kleinberg is a Senior Fellow at IMAP and a Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. The emphasis of his current work is on environmental and regulatory issues associated with the oil and gas industry. From 1980 to 2018, Dr. Kleinberg was employed by Schlumberger, the leading oilfield service company, attaining the rank of Schlumberger Fellow, one of about a dozen who held this rank in a workforce of 100,000. From 1978 to 1980, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Exxon Corporate Research Laboratory in Linden, New Jersey. Dr. Kleinberg was educated at the University of California, Berkeley (B.S. Chemistry, 1971) and the University of California, San Diego (Ph.D. Physics, 1978). Dr. Kleinberg has authored more than 120 academic and professional papers, holds 42 U.S. patents, and has invented several geophysical instruments that have been commercialized on a worldwide basis. Dr. Kleinberg is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
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March 21, 2024 – Pharmaceutical Industry Reporting on Access
Pharmaceutical Industry Reporting on Access
The pharmaceutical industry plays an important role in the global effort to achieve universal health coverage (UHC). Accessing essential medicines and related health products remains a challenge in many parts of the world. Companies have made substantial investments over the last decade in access partnerships in low- and middle-income countries. Furthermore, companies are increasingly integrating access strategies into their core business and developing sustainable models to do so.
Access efforts by companies draw interest from a diverse set of stakeholders, each with their own perspective on the purpose of those efforts and how success should be defined. Two sets of stakeholders are particularly influential: global institutions representing the public interest, including country governments and multilaterals such as the World Health Organization; and investors, who are increasingly engaging with the industry on access issues through an ESG lens. Companies are currently being presented with an uncoordinated set of requests from stakeholders for information and data related to access activities and performance, often with ambiguous expectations around what good performance looks like. This has served as a barrier to effective action and has held back progress in achieving UHC.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, together with industry partners, recently established a deliberative process involving open dialogue among key stakeholders to strengthen and harmonize industry reporting on access. A team from Boston University is supporting this work and will directly engage stakeholders in the process and organize a set of workshops, the first of which will be held in Spring 2024. The overall goal of this effort is to align on a small set of simple, pragmatic metrics and clearer expectations.
Peter Rockers, BU Associate Professor of Global Health, presented on this work.
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February 2024 – Do or Do Not, There is No Try
Do or Do Not, There is No Try: Managing and Mitigating Sociopolitical Firm Risk Events
Firms are increasingly concerned about mitigating the harm of sociopolitical (SP) firm risk events, with a focus on enhancing outcomes for profits, stakeholder relationships, and firm value. Risk management becomes salient when brands attempt to connect with trending SP issues through public relations and marketing campaigns, but their efforts can backfire by challenging social justice or provoking unanticipated consumer activism. Firms with the best intentions can clash with social norms and expectations.
Chen Jing, Dokyun Lee, Shuba Srinivasan, and Susan Fournier, researchers at BU’s Questrom School of Business, investigate the impact of SP firm risk events on stakeholders’ reactions on social media and firm value and explore strategies to mitigate potential downsides. They use natural language processing methods to label SP social media posts and then apply the difference-in-differences with multiple time periods method to estimate the relationship between mitigation efforts and firm outcomes. The results show that high-effort responses are associated with favorable stakeholder social media reactions, including volume and sentiment. Furthermore, for firms with strong brand equity, closer relationships with wrongdoers, or good performance in ESG or diversity, high-effort responses are associated with even more favorable social media reactions. By contrast, high-effort responses have no association with firm value, except for firms with strong brand equity. Lastly, for firms with distant relationships with wrongdoers, high-effort responses can even backfire. Their findings offer contributions and managerial implications in the context of branding and crisis management for academicians and practitioners.
January 2024 – Who does not care loses
Who does not care loses: Ethical governance and the bottom line
In the ESG arena, the E is getting the majority of the attention, and the S closely follows, while the G, even though holding the key to the E and the S, comes almost as an afterthought. In a joint study, a team from Boston University led by Irena Vodenska, advised by a team from Fidelity Investments led by Michael Robertson, examine the relationship between corporate governance factors and firm performance and risk, focusing on financial considerations, board characteristics, and adherence to governance principles. The aim is to explore the impact of governance practices on business resilience and financial performance. The investigation seeks to understand whether and which effective corporate governance practices lead to better financial performance and lower risk, enhancing a firm’s value.
The paper applies panel regression analysis on 600 public companies, 70 percent from the US and 30 percent from the EU, between October 2019 and February 2023 from sectors comprising Communication Services, Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Energy, Financials, Healthcare, Industrials, Information Technology, Materials, Real Estate, and Utilities. The EU sample incorporates developed European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The study shows significant relationships between several governance factors and firm performance and risk: Higher accruals (a typical measure of low earnings quality) are associated with lower net income. Independent audit committees show a negative relation with financial performance but are not significantly related to corporate risk. Having a financial expert on the Board is positively related to net income. The involvement of individuals or entities closely connected to the companies in various transactions, including asset transfers, loans, and loan guarantees, is negatively related to financial performance measured by gross margin.
The findings highlight the different perspectives on governance practices between US and EU companies. While higher accruals are negatively related to financial performance in the US, they are positively associated with performance in the EU. Also, while having a financial expert on the Board is positively associated with performance in the US, it is negatively related to gross margin in the EU. The transactions by related individuals and entities and audit committee independence significantly negatively affect firm performance only in the US. This presentation was given by Irena Vodenska, BU Professor of Finance.
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December 2023 – What do shareholders want?
What do shareholders want firms to maximize - profits or profits + ESG objectives?
There is a long-standing debate about whether firms should maximize profits or also target broader environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives. If ESG objectives are targeted, which ones are most important? A key question is: What are the preferences of the shareholders who own the firm? This project will measure shareholder preferences about traditional ESG-related objectives as well as an understudied aspect of ESG: how shareholders want firms to act in imperfectly competitive markets. It will also measure the extent to which shareholders have preferences for promoting consumer welfare in imperfectly competitive markets, such as by lowering prices or avoiding “shrouded fees.”
Keith Ericson, BU Professor of Markets, presented his research.
November 2023 – Direct and Spillover Effects of U.S. State-Level Climate Change Regulations
What are the effects of state-level greenhouse gas regulations?
Given the barriers to national and global climate change regulations, what are the direct and spillover effects of subnational regulations? Using the staggered adoption of U.S. state-level greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations as a natural experiment, PhD candidate and BU lecturer Aliya Korganbekova’s research has found significant direct GHG intensity reductions for firms headquartered in U.S. states that have adopted GHG regulations. At the same time, affected firms increase their GHG emissions disclosures and reduce the number of GHG-related 10-K risk disclosures. In addition, there are large spillover reductions in GHG emissions for treated firms’ affiliated operations in non-adopting states. These findings suggest possible alternate pathways to reduce GHG emissions if national or supranational policy coordination is not possible.
September 2023 – Predicting the success of utility climate targets
Can we predict if a utility will meet its climate targets?
Whether or not a utility company achieves its climate targets is crucial information for investors, asset managers, and researchers. Increasingly, utilities are announcing carbon targets to signal their commitment towards achieving global climate goals. They are retiring their fossil fuel assets – sometimes earlier than their operational lifetime – and replacing them with clean energy infrastructure to achieve these goals. State-level policies and market conditions can influence whether a utility company actually achieves their stated targets.
PhD candidate Alicia Zhang discussed her research on this topic. She has constructed logistic regression models to predict whether an energy generation asset will be retired or built on time. These models use an optimization technique that embodies the concept of general-to-specific modeling and estimated on historical data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The research explores which political, regulatory, market, and technological factors are influential to the timing of a plant retirement or addition, as well as the magnitude of this influence. This research is part of IMAP’s Corporate Carbon Risk project.
June 2023 – The 51 Percent Project & Finance Professionals
How should we be communicating about climate change?
Sarah Finnie introduced the 51 Percent Project and shared her personal journey from being disengaged about climate change to becoming an alarmed activist. The 51 Percent Project identifies best practices for effective communication about climate change; its name references the growing majority of Americans who now say they are seriously concerned about climate change. The Project has identified 12 principles to use when talking about climate change so people will listen; #1 is simply talking about the topic.
Finnie zeroed in on how to talk about climate so that people in the financial sector will listen, emphasizing the importance of moving investments to clean energy. Using her #1 principle, “Talk About It,” Finnie said that it’s important to talk about finance-relevant issues like: building a grid to accommodate increased demand from electrification; insurers refusing to issue new policies in entire states; the cost of NOT addressing climate change, including NOAA’s quarterly index of $1 billion dollar climate disasters in the US (total 2022 damages $165.1 billion). Finnie closed by outlining a series of truths to keep in mind when talking to finance professionals about climate change.
April 2023 – ESG Risk Disclosures: The Predictive Ability of SASB Recommendations versus Industry Best Practice
What is the predictive ability of ESG risk disclosures?
This project examines the predictive ability of ESG risk disclosures. We use a textual analysis-based approach to derive measures assessing firms’ material ESG risk disclosures with respect to two benchmarks: SASB recommendations, discerned through analysis of the Materiality Map applied to the risk factors section of firms’ 10-Ks; and industry best practice, discerned using the ESG risks disclosed by the majority of the industry’s largest firms. Descriptively, we document (i) considerable variation in the degree to which firms’ ESG disclosures are consistent with SASB recommendations; (ii) that firms disclose as material a large number of ESG risk factors deemed immaterial per the SASB recommendations; and (iii) that firm disclosures of material ESG risks are more consistent with industry best practice. We find that two left-tail ESG outcomes—subsequent year ESG penalties and incidents—are predicted by firm material ESG risk disclosures that are consistent with industry best practice, but not by disclosed ESG risks deemed as material per the SASB framework. Overall, the results suggest that for left-tail ESG outcomes, the strongest predictive ability lies within ESG items outside of (within) those denoted as material per SASB (per industry market leaders).
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Eddie Riedl, John F. Smith Jr. Professor in Management; Professor of Accounting; Department Chair, Accounting at Boston University Estelle Yuan Sun, Dean’s Research Scholar; Associate Professor, Accounting at Boston University Aliya Korganbekova, PhD Student in Accounting at Boston University
March 2023- Business Risks due to Biodiversity Loss in Indonesia
Which Indonesian palm oil plantations are associated with loss of tropical biodiversity?
Our research examines certified and non-certified palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. Using remotely sensed Landsat data, we examine deforestation trends from 2000 to 2020. Further, we spatially correlate the deforestation loss with the presence of palm oil plantations and refineries. We validate our findings with the recently published research on palm oil plantations.
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Sucharita Gopal, Professor of Earth & Environment at Boston University Mira Kelly-Fair, PhD Student in Earth & Environment at Boston University
February 2023 – Disinformation and native advertising about climate change: Identifying ESG claims
How corporations are employing the power of native advertising
Michelle Amazeen and Chris Wells, both from the BU College of Communication, discuss their research looking at native advertising in the media, content created by news organizations that looks like editorial content, but is actually corporate advertising. Native advertising is used by corporations to influence public perception about a topic. This is happening across the globe as a way for news organizations to earn revenue. Disclosures are required, but often disappear when shared on social media. Concerns about native advertising are that it deceives audiences and harms journalistic integrity. The research focuses on which fossil fuel companies are using native advertising and their claims of sustainability, as well as what they’re saying about climate change.
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Chris Wells, Associate Professor, BU Emerging Media Studies Michelle Amazeen, Director, Boston University Communication Research Center & Associate Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Advertising and Public Relations
January 2023- Corporate Carbon Risk in Utilities
What is the risk associated with corporate carbon targets?
This research project will help investors determine the risk associated with corporations achieving their future carbon targets.
As corporations and investment firms both commit to targets for reducing their carbon emissions, there is growing desire to understand the risk associated with these future target statements. Whether or not a firm achieves its emissions targets can not only place its reputation at risk, but also that of those along it’s supply chain, including their investors. Current and future policies aimed at pricing climate externalities, mean that corporate climate performance can have a material impact on financial performance. Yet, the lack of reliable metrics to capture these risks pose severe challenges. This project aims to develop a novel methodology to predict the likelihood of achieving future corporate carbon targets. It will also publish an open database of the resulting risk measures for those companies that we analyze. This particular presentation will share our preliminary results looking at the American electric utility sector.
Scholars have reported problems with well-known studies on ESG research and more are being investigated. Does this imply that ESG research is prone to publication bias? What does it suggest for our use of published findings? In my session, I will present some of the problems that have been uncovered. Then, I hope to lead a conversation on the implications for the study and application of ESG.
Andrew King Professor of Strategy and Innovation, and Questrom Professor in Management, Boston University
November 2022- When Green Investors Are Green Consumers
Why does the impact of green investing on polluting firms’ costs of capital appear to be limited?
We bring investors with preferences for green assets to a general equilibrium setting in which they also prefer consuming green goods. Their preferences for green goods induce consumption premia on expected returns that counterbalance the green premium stemming from their preferences for green assets. Because they provide a hedge when green goods become expensive, brown assets command lower consumption premia, and green investors allocate a larger share of their portfolios towards them. Empirically, the green-minus-brown consumption premia differential reached 30-40 basis points annually and contributes to explaining the limited impact of green investing on polluting firms’ costs of capital. Read Draft Paper
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Olivier David Zerbib, Associate Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School Maxime Sauzet, Assistant Professor of Finance at Boston University
March 2022 – Physical Climate Risk, Awareness, and Firms’ Adaptation Strategy
How are firms adapting to climate change?
Physical climate risks increasingly impact firms. While scholars have investigated how firms mitigate their impact on climate change, we know little about how firmsadaptto climate change. The study builds a novel dataset that compiles information on the adaptation strategies of publicly traded companies across the globe and merges it withclimate science data. Using this dataset, we examine whether, how, and under which conditions firms adapt to physical climate risks.The study finds thatthe average adaptation rate across firms and climate risk drivers is low. Firms facing higher climate risks are more likely to adapt and do so with a broader range of adaptation strategies (which include both risk management and business strategies). The impact of climate risks on firms’ adaptation strategies increases over time, particularly for business strategies. It also finds that firms’ adaptation to higher climate risks is influenced byclimate change and risk management awareness.
Xia Li, Ph.D. candidate in Strategy & Innovation at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business
November 2021 – Understanding ESG Risks through Textual Analysis
How to quantify firms’ exposure to ESG risks using textual analysis
We will examine an alternative measurement approach towards ESG topics: the use of textual analysis applied to various corporate filings and disclosures as a way to quantify firms’ exposure to these risks, and actions being taken to address them.
Eddie Riedl (PhD CPA CMA CIA) John F. Smith Jr. Professor in Management; Professor of Accounting; Department Chair, Accounting at Boston University
October 2021 – Future Carbon Emissions
How can investors determine which corporate targets are at risk?
We know many corporations are setting targets for their future corporate carbon emissions, yet also know that not all past targets were achieved. We are developing a methodology to determine the level of risk associated with these future goals by comparing the goals with the other investment and operations plans published by each entity.
