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- May 2023
- Case
CMA CGM: Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Container Shipping
By: Willy C. Shih and Emilie Billaud
Marine transport is the most cost-effective way to move large volumes over long distances, and container shipping is the backbone of international trade in goods. Yet shipping contributed 3% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, and the deep-sea segment, which...
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- 2023
- Case
Christiana Figueres and the Collaborative Approach to Negotiating Climate Action
By: James K. Sebenius, Laurence A. Green, Hannah Riley-Bowles, Lara SanPietro and Mina Subramanian
This case study centers on Harvard’s Program on Negotiation 2022 Great Negotiator, Christiana Figueres, and her efforts as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to build momentum for, and ultimately pass, the 2015...
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- 2023
- Working Paper
Accounting for Carbon Offsets – Establishing the Foundation for Carbon-Trading Markets
By: Robert S. Kaplan, Karthik Ramanna and Marc Roston
Tackling climate change requires reductions in current and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as the removal of existing GHG from the atmosphere. Carbon-offset producers purport to provide such removals. But poor measurement practices and inadequate controls...
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- December 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Marfrig's Quest for Sustainable Beef
By: Jose B. Alvarez, Pedro Levindo and Ruth Costas
Marfrig, one of the world’s leading meatpackers, strived to comply with its commitment to have a deforestation-free value chain in Brazil by 2030. The company also pledged to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases in accordance with the guidelines set by the...
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Keywords:
Agribusiness;
Animal-Based Agribusiness;
Plant-Based Agribusiness;
Acquisition;
Family Business;
Communication Strategy;
Environmental Management;
Climate Change;
Environmental Regulation;
Environmental Sustainability;
Bonds;
Food;
Global Strategy;
Goods and Commodities;
Government and Politics;
Political Elections;
Leading Change;
Marketing;
Product Marketing;
Product Positioning;
Supply Chain;
Supply Chain Management;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Business and Government Relations;
Business and Stakeholder Relations;
Partners and Partnerships;
Strategy;
Adaptation;
Business Strategy;
Commercialization;
Competitive Strategy;
Corporate Strategy;
Diversification;
Expansion;
Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Brazil;
Latin America;
Argentina;
Uruguay;
North America;
United States;
Europe;
Asia;
China
- October 21, 2022
- Article
Climate Regulations Are About to Disrupt Global Shipping
By: Willy C. Shih
Ships that transport goods across oceans are collectively a major generator of greenhouse gases. Rules from the International Maritime Organization and the European Union aimed at curbing these emission promise to make transoceanic and regional shipping more expensive...
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- October 17, 2022
- Article
When Climate Collaboration Is Treated as an Antitrust Violation
By: Matteo Gasparini, Knut Haanaes and Peter Tufano
Carbon emissions transcend firms and borders—they are a massive, unpriced externality. Companies across industries are increasingly waking up to the need to cooperate in the fight against climate change but the law might get in the way. Across Europe and the U.S.,...
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- June 2022 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
South Africa – a 'Just Energy Transition'
By: Richard Vietor
South Africa, like most other countries, is in the process of reducing its carbon emissions to comply with COP26 and, hopefully, reach net zero emissions by 2050. However, because South Africa relies almost wholly on coal (93%) for electricity, and on coal for...
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- June 2022
- Case
Business Implications from Regulating Carbon Emissions in the EU
By: George Serafeim and Benjamin Maletta
In the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union (the EU) had led the global fight against climate change with a wide array of policy measures. The EU’s primary approach to climate policy had been taxation via the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU...
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- 2021
- Working Paper
Pricing of Climate Risk Insurance: Regulation and Cross-Subsidies
By: Ishita Sen, Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva and Sangmin Oh
Homeowners’ insurance provides households financial protection from climate losses. To improve access and affordability, state regulators impose price controls on insurance companies. Using novel data, we construct a new measure of rate setting frictions for individual...
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- August 2021 (Revised September 2022)
- Case
Patch Technology: Making It Easy to Do the Right Thing
By: Tomomichi Amano, Robert J. Dolan and Carol Zhang
In 2021, the growing threat of climate change pushed companies around the world to understand that significant behavioral change was necessary. While many recognized that decreasing emissions was critical, more sophisticated players such as Microsoft began to recognize...
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- July 2021
- Article
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...
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Keywords:
Voluntary Disclosure;
Accounting Standards;
Sustainability;
Nonfinancial Information;
Corporate Social Responsibility;
Stock Price Informativeness;
Synchronicity;
Environmental Sustainability;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Accountability;
Stocks;
Price;
Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact;
Accounting;
Standards
- March 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
The Trouble with TCE
By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella and Galit Goldstein
Trichloroethylene, or TCE, was a chemical used by tens of thousands of businesses in the United States. It was an affordable tool for many. Yet, TCE had been associated with important health risks, including cancer and autoimmune disease. TCE potentially posed other...
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- June 2020
- Article
How Scheduling Can Bias Quality Assessment: Evidence from Food Safety Inspections
By: Maria Ibanez and Michael W. Toffel
Accuracy and consistency are critical for inspections to be an effective, fair, and useful tool for assessing risks, quality, and suppliers—and for making decisions based on those assessments. We examine how inspector schedules could introduce bias that erodes...
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- 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...
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Keywords:
Bankruptcy;
Board Of Directors;
Board Dynamics;
Business Ethics;
Business Model Innovation;
Corporate Boards;
Energy Efficiency;
Environmental And Social Sustainability;
Government And Business;
Hedge Funds;
Institutional Investors;
Legal Aspects Of Business;
Regulated Monopolies;
Regulation;
Shareholders;
Stakeholder Management;
Strategy And Execution;
Utilities;
Insolvency and Bankruptcy;
Governing and Advisory Boards;
Ethics;
Capital Structure;
Climate Change;
Corporate Accountability;
Corporate Governance;
Environmental Sustainability;
Executive Compensation;
Leadership;
Management;
Safety;
Business and Government Relations;
Energy Industry;
Utilities Industry;
California;
United States
- November 2019
- Supplement
Hapag-Lloyd AG: Complying with IMO 2020
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney
A new environmental regulation known as IMO 2020 was creating what one industry analyst called “the biggest shakeup for the oil and shipping industries in decades.” According to the new regulation, all ocean-going ships would have to limit their sulfur emissions by...
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- November 2019
- Case
Hapag-Lloyd AG: Complying with IMO 2020
By: Benjamin C. Esty, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney
A new environmental regulation known as IMO 2020 was creating what one industry analyst called “the biggest shakeup for the oil and shipping industries in decades.” According to the new regulation, all ocean-going ships would have to limit their sulfur emissions by...
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- 2020
- Working Paper
How ESG Issues Become Financially Material to Corporations and Their Investors
By: George Serafeim
Management and disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues have received substantial interest over the last decade. In this paper, we outline a framework of how ESG issues become financially material, affecting corporate profitability and valuation....
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Keywords:
Materiality;
ESG;
Pharmaceutical Companies;
Business Ethics;
Sustainability;
Environment;
Disclosure;
Disclosure And Access;
Regulation;
Social Impact;
Environmental Sustainability;
Social Issues;
Corporate Governance;
Ethics;
Corporate Disclosure;
Corporate Accountability;
Resource Allocation;
Finance;
Accounting;
Valuation
- July 2019
- Article
Market Reaction to Mandatory Nonfinancial Disclosure
By: Jody Grewal, Edward J. Riedl and George Serafeim
We examine the equity market reaction to events associated with the passage of a directive in the European Union (EU) mandating increased nonfinancial disclosure. These disclosures relate to firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and would be...
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Keywords:
Nonfinancial Information;
Nonfinancial Performance;
ESG;
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Performance;
Investor Behavior;
Disclosure;
Disclosure Regulation;
Regulation;
Sustainability;
Corporate Performance;
Information;
Corporate Disclosure;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Performance;
Environmental Sustainability;
Corporate Governance;
Outcome or Result
- 2017
- Working Paper
Creating the Market for Organic Wine: Sulfites, Certification, and Green Values
By: Geoffrey Jones and Emily Grandjean
This working paper examines the history of organic wine, which provides a case study of failed category creation. The modern organic wine industry emerged during the 1970s in the United States and Western Europe, but it struggled to gain traction compared to other...
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- October 2017
- Supplement
Turnaround at Norsk Gjenvinning (B)
By: George Serafeim
The case describes the impact of Norsk Gjenvinning's (NG) transformation efforts on reducing corruption and non-compliance within the Norwegian waste management industry.
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