Faculty & Research - Business & Environment

December 2020
Case

Prime Coalition: Catalytic Capital for Climate Innovation

By: Ramana Nanda, Benjamin N. Roth and Olivia Hull

With long development timelines and high risk, new energy technologies were often left to languish in the “valley of death,” unable to raise enough funds to bring a product to market. In 2014, Sarah Kearney founded the nonprofit Prime Coalition to solve this problem....

2020
Working Paper

A Preliminary Framework for Product Impact-Weighted Accounts

By: George Serafeim, Katie Trinh and T. Robert Zochowski

While there has been significant progress in the measurement of an organization’s environmental and social performance, metrics to evaluate the impact of products once they come to market lag far behind. In this paper we provide a framework for systematic measurement...

Forthcoming
Journal of Business Ethics

Material Sustainability Information and Stock Price Informativeness

By: Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann and George Serafeim

As part of the SEC’s revision of Regulation S-K, many investors proposed the mandatory disclosure of sustainability information in the form of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data. However, progress is contingent on collecting evidence regarding which...

Forthcoming
Daedalus

Climate in the Boardroom: Struggling to Reconcile Business as Usual and the End of the World as We Know It

By: Rebecca Henderson

Forthcoming
AEA Papers and Proceedings

Tackling Climate Change Requires Organizational Purpose

By: Rebecca Henderson and George Serafeim

Unchecked climate change presents a profound threat to economic growth and political stability but despite widespread public concern about the issue, global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) have not declined. Indeed current “business as usual” predictions imply...

2020
Book Chapter

Interrogating Corporate Purpose: Values Based Firms and the Struggle to Build a Just and Sustainable World

By: Rebecca Henderson

Forthcoming
Book

Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

By: Rebecca Henderson

Free market capitalism is one of humanity’s greatest inventions and the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. But this success has been costly. Capitalism is on the verge of destroying the planet and destabilizing society as wealth rushes to the top....

Nature Human Behaviour

What We Can Learn from Five Naturalistic Field Experiments that Failed to Shift Commuter Behaviour

By: A.S. Kristal and A.V. Whillans

Across five field experiments with employees of a large organization (n = 68,915), we examined whether standard behavioural interventions (“nudges”) successfully reduced single-occupancy vehicle commutes. In Studies 1 and 2, we sent letters and emails with nudges...

January 2020
Case

Governing PG&E

By: Lynn S. Paine and Will Hurwitz

The five commissioners of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) listened intently at a public forum in April 2019 as PG&E Corporation’s out-going chairman Richard Kelly described the company’s proposed new board. PG&E, which provided electricity and natural...

Forthcoming
Financial Analysts Journal

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...

January 2020
Case

Fossil Fuel Divestment (Abridged)

By: Michael W. Toffel and Sarah Gulick

The President of Harvard University is facing growing pressure from students, alumni, and other climate change activists that are urging the university to divest its multi-billion dollar endowment from fossil fuel companies. The case summarizes the arguments for and...

January 2020
Teaching Material

Clover Food Lab in 2016 (B)

By: Lena G. Goldberg and Michael S. Kaufman