Research Newsletter: Fall 2022
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to CSP’s Fall 2022 research newsletter! It has been another few exciting months for CSP. In this newsletter, we highlight some of the accomplishments of our research team.
At the beginning of September, we successfully co-hosted the Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI) conference, where we shared insightful discussions and exchanges about sustainable finance with 250+ practitioners and researchers.
For our publications, our scientific paper “Do Investors Care About Impact?” –accepted for publication in the prestigious journal “The Review of Financial Studies”– has been getting attention and covered by media outlets such as Forbes and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, even before being published. We look forward to seeing more investors who value how much impact they are getting from their investment.
Sincerely,
Publication News
Fresh off the Presses: Insightful Impact Investing ‘Recipes’ from Eight Family Offices
What is the sweet spot for your family’s impact investments? While each family’s rendition is unique, a wealth of top “kitchen” tricks can be found in the newest CSP report: Ten Ingredients for Impact Investing: Eight Families Share Their Recipes. From defining a vision the whole family can get behind to the nitty gritty of implementing your Investment Policy Statement, this practical guide offers a detailed look into the ways eight different families are building robust impact portfolios and the strategies, tools, and advice they’ve picked up along the way. Published in collaboration with The ImPact, the report is a valuable resource for families of wealth, impact investors, and wealth managers, as well as researchers working in these areas. It is available for download here.
A Better Understanding of Blended Finance: Fine-tuning the Tools and Approaches
As blended finance is considered a critical tool to mobilize capital toward sustainable development-related projects, and the sector is gaining growing interest by showing diverse blended finance approaches, clear guidance on when to use which approach has not followed at the same pace. To fill this gap, the Initiative for Blended Finance, run by CSP, Bertha Centre and Roots of Impact, and funded by the UBS Optimus Foundation, has released the second guide of the research project “Blended Finance: When to use which instrument,” which provides blended-finance practitioners with decision-making tools and frameworks for sustainable development. Read all about this ongoing research project here.
Our latest scientific articles
What’s more valuable: a “warm glow” or exponential impact?
Do investors care about impact? If so, how much are they willing to pay for it? This is the central question of a recent CSP paper accepted for publication in the prestigious journal The Review of Financial Studies. In a summary of the paper, CSP’s Andrew Douglas discusses the key finding: while investors feel good once they choose to invest more sustainably, they may not feel better the more impactful their investments are. Read the summary here.
Analysis of climate-risk disclosure using Google’s AI-based algorithm
“Ask BERT: How Regulatory Disclosure of Transition and Physical Climate Risks Affects the CDS Term Structure,” co-authored by CSP researchers, has been published in the Journal of Financial Econometrics. Using Google’s deep learning framework, BERT, this study analyzes the opposing effects of disclosing transition and physical risks on Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads. You can read the full paper here.
Looking back at GRASFI 2022
This year’s Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investing (GRASFI) Conference, the world’s largest annual research conference in sustainable finance, was a resounding success! Co-hosted in Zurich by CSP and the Center of Competence for Sustainable Finance at UZH, the three-day event brought together over 250 finance professionals, public sector decision-makers, environmental leaders, and world-class researchers to discuss the latest in sustainable finance research and its implications for practice. Next year’s conference will be hosted by Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. CSP will continue to play an active role with our Managing Director Falko Paetzold staying on as a member of the GRASFI Board. See photos from #GRASFI22 and read a summary of the highlights here.
Recognitions & Celebrations
AOM ONE Best Student Paper awarded to CSPer Anne Kellers
At this year’s Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, USA, PhD candidate and CSP researcher Anne Kellers was awarded the “Organizations and the Natural Environment (ONE)” Award for Best Student Paper. The AOM ONE Division is devoted to advancing research, teaching, and service related to the interactions between organizations and the natural environment. You can find the abstract of the paper “Investors Pushing for Sustainability: How Firms Assess the Authenticity of Investors’ ESG Requests” by Anne, Julian Kölbel, and Falko Paetzold, here.
CSP Researcher Florian Heeb completes high-impact Doctorate
On August 24th, CSP Researcher Florian Heeb successfully defended his Ph.D. at the University of Zurich Department of Banking and Finance. The first of his three papers, “Can Sustainable Investing Save the World?” is the most-read article in the journal Organization & Environment. Now in Boston, Florian will continue his research on how investors’ sustainability demands can deliver real-world impact at MIT Sloan School of Business as a Post-Doctoral Researcher and CSP Collaborator. Follow his research insights on Linkedin.
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