Faculty & Research - Business & Environment

Filter Results

March 2019
Teaching Material

Climate Change: Paris, and the Road Ahead

By: Vincent Pons

February 2019
Teaching Material

The Rise Fund: TPG Bets Big on Impact

By: Vikram S Gandhi

Teaching Note for HBS No. 318-041.

Research Summary

Building a Corporate Culture of Health

By: Robert S. Huckman

This stream of Professor Huckman's work involves developing and implementing a survey of U.S. corporations regarding their commitments to developing a “culture of health” aimed at improving well-being for employees, consumers, communities, and the environment. This...

2019
Working Paper

Understanding and Overcoming Roadblocks to Environmental Sustainability. Past Roads and Future Prospects

By: Ann-Kristin Bergquist, Shawn A. Cole, John Ehrenfeld, Andrew A. King and Auden Schendler

This working paper examines key barriers to business sustainability discussed at a multidisciplinary conference held at the Harvard Business School in 2018. Drawing on perspectives from both the historical and business literatures, speakers debated the historical...

2018
Working Paper

Corporate Sustainability: A Strategy?

By: Ioannis Ioannou and George Serafeim

We explore the extent of adopting sustainability practices over time and the implications for firm performance. We find that for almost all industries, sustainability practices converge within an industry over time, implying that they spread as common practices. We...

2018
Working Paper

Southern Responses to Gold Certification: Cooperate, Compete, Reject, Revise

By: Kristin Sippl

Southern responses to Northern-led certification programs are understandable and largely predictable if the ideas, interests, and power of key actors are accurately assessed. When alignment and power are high, Northern programs will likely succeed. When they are low,...

2018
Working Paper

Public Sentiment and the Price of Corporate Sustainability

By: George Serafeim

Combining corporate sustainability performance scores based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data with big data measuring public sentiment about a company’s sustainability performance, I find that the valuation premium paid for companies with strong...

2018
Book

Varieties of Green Business: Industries, Nations and Time

By: G. Jones

Published at a time of ever-increasing warnings that the pace of climate change and other environmental changes risk making the Earth unsustainable within our own lifetimes, this book looks at the past of green business to identify lessons for the future. It provides...

2018
Working Paper

Financing the Response to Climate Change: The Pricing and Ownership of U.S. Green Bonds

By: Malcolm Baker, Daniel Bergstresser, George Serafeim and Jeffrey Wurgler

We study green bonds, which are bonds whose proceeds are used for environmentally sensitive purposes. After an overview of the U.S. corporate and municipal green bonds markets, we study pricing and ownership patterns using a simple framework that incorporates assets...

September 2018
Case

The Progressive Corporation, 2018

By: John R. Wells and Benjamin Weinstock

This case addresses the rise of The Progressive Corporation (Progressive) as a top player in the property and casualty and auto insurance industries. In July 2018, Progressive, the USA's third largest auto insurance writer, reported half-year earned premiums up 21% on...

2018
Working Paper

Golden Opportunity? Voluntary Sustainability Standards for Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

By: Kristin Sippl

While much is known about transnational climate governance, less is known about transnationalism's contributions to the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper helps balance the literature via comparative analysis of the...

September 2018 (Revised December 2018)
Case

THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS: Selecting Impact Funds

By: Vikram Gandhi, Caitlin Reimers Brumme and Nathaniel Schwalb

After much internal debate, THE VELUX FOUNDATIONS of Denmark have decided to allocate a small percentage of their investment portfolio to impact investments. Cambridge Associates, one of the leading investment advisory firms in the world, has been engaged to assist...