CfP – International Workshop on Green Finance at Tsinghua University (26-27th October)

The “International Workshop on Green Finance” will take place at Tsinghua University from 26th to 27th October 2019.

This workshop is co-organised by Tsinghua University (China), Jonkoping University (Sweden), and the Supervision Workstream of the Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS).

The aim of the workshop is to stimulate research and discussions within the global academic community on key issues related to green and sustainable finance.

Please find the Call for Papers below.

Background

Over the past years, green finance has become a mainstream topic globally at the policy level and within the global financial community. The G20 Green Finance Study Group (GFSG), launched in 2016, has developed policy recommendations on scaling up green finance, including greening the banking system, the bond market and institutional investors, promoting environmental risk analysis and the availability of environmental data, developing green PE/VC and green ABS, among other issues. These recommendations were welcomed by the G20 Leaders and have helped scale up the global green financial market. Globally, more than 30 countries/regions have issued their green finance roadmaps and policy initiatives. With this momentum, the Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), launched in 2017, has established the supervision workstream (WS1) to examine environmental and climate-related financial risks, risk differentials between green and brown assets, environmental and climate information disclosure and other issues.

However, it appears that the academic and research community has not devoted sufficient resources to this very important topic of greening the finance system, which should play a key role in improving our environment and combating climate change. This workshop, co-organized by Tsinghua University, Jonkoping University and the NGFS WS1, aims to stimulate research and discussions within the global academic community on key issues related to green and sustainable finance. Dr. Ma Jun, who is Director of Research Center for Green Finance Developing at Tsinghua, Co-chair of G20 GFSG, Chair of the NGSF WS1 and Chairman of China Green Finance Committee, will host the workshop together with Prof. Andreas Stephan of Jonkoping University.

Suggested Topics

We welcome submission of papers from researchers in the academic and research community, as well as those from financial institutions and third-party service providers, to the workshop. We are interested in topics such as environmental/climate risk analysis by financial institutions, central banks and supervisors; green financial product innovation; and ESG application of financial and non-financial firms. Analyses with sound theoretical and empirical foundations are most welcome. Research papers on other issues related green and sustainable finance are also welcome, but pure policy papers may not be the focus of this workshop.

We suggest interested participants of the workshop pay special attention to the following issues, many of which are being considered by central banks and financial supervisors:

1. The effects of firms’ environmental management on financial performance. What’s the

relationship between firm management and its environmental performance (e.g., would better ESG performance leads to better financial performance)?

2. Green assets performance and risk profile in the capital market. Are bonds issued by “greener issuers (with better ESG performance)” less likely to default?

3. Financial performance of green loans. Are green loans less likely to default compared with nongreen loans?

4. Environmental risk analysis. How to use scenario analyses and stress tests to analyze, on a forward-looking basis, the environmental and climate risks (physical and transitional risks) faced by financial institutions?

5. Financial stability implication of environmental and climate risks. What are the likely impacts of environmental/climate risks on financial stability? What analytical frameworks and models should be developed to analyze such risks?

6. Benefits of environmental/climate information disclosure. Can firms with better ESG

transparency benefit from lower funding costs? Can the benefits of improved disclosure

outweigh the additional costs of disclosure?

7. Methodologies for measuring ESG performance of firms and assets. How to effectively

measure the ESG performance of companies, banks, asset managers? How can Fintech be applied to ESG data collection and processing?

Paper Submissions and Conference Organization

Those who are interested in joining the workshop please submit your paper abstract (one page) by June 30, 2019 to Dr. Jing Li (lijing@pbcsf.tsinghua.edu.cn) of Tsinghua Research Center for Green Finance Development and Dr. Andreas Stephan (Andreas.Stephan@ju.se) of Jonkoping University. Please submit your full paper or a detailed ppt by August 15, 2019.

Authors who are selected to attend the workshop will be notified by the end of August, 2019.

The workshop will be held from October 26-27, 2019 at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Workshop papers will be selected by the Program Committee consisting of a panel of well

recognized scholars and experts in this field. We will recommend selected papers to be published in a Special Issue of an international academic journal (upon consent of the authors).

Conference organizers will not charge any fees on applicants/participants. Those who will attend the workshop should cover their own hotel travel costs.

Contact person details:

Dr. Jing Li

Research Center for Green Finance Development

PBC School of Finance, Tsinghua University

lijing@pbcsf.tsinghua.edu.cn