Baruch Climate Finance and Sustainability Conference Examines How Finance Can Address Climate Change

Baruch Climate Finance and Sustainability Conference Examines How Finance Can Address Climate Change

March 13, 2025

More than 100 professors and doctoral candidates filled a 14th-floor conference room in the Newman Vertical Campus on March 6 for the kickoff of the Baruch Climate Finance and Sustainability Conference, co-sponsored with the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (JFQA).

Scholars from major institutions, including Princeton, Columbia, Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, Wharton, and New York University, as well as international participants from the United Kingdom, France, Hong Kong, and Canada, presented and discussed research on climate finance in areas that included "The Impact of Wildfire Pollution on Healthcare Municipal Finance" and "The Cost of Net Zero."

The conference was organized by the Zicklin School's Lin Peng, Krell Chair Professor of Finance (Bert W. Wasserman Department of Economics and Finance), with her co-organizers, Associate Professor Dexin Zhou (Wasserman Department) and Assistant Professor Svenja Dube (Stan Ross Department of Accountancy).

Other Zicklin faculty who participated as session chairs or discussants included Professor Linda Allen, William F. Aldinger Chair in Banking and Finance (Wasserman Department); Assistant Professor Fabrice Tourre (Wasserman Department); Associate Professor Edward Li (Ross Department); Associate Professor Leonard Kostovetsky (Wasserman Department); and Professor Jun "Jonathan" Wang (Wasserman Department).

On the second day of the conference, Kai Li, Canada Research Chair in Corporate Governance at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the managing editor of the JFQA, spoke about corporate culture and organizational culture. "This is a very impressive conference," she told a reporter, adding that she was inspired by last year's program and consequently agreed to jointly sponsor the conference on behalf of the JFQA.

The conference offered a rare opportunity for climate finance researchers to receive feedback on their work. Out of 238 submissions by 560 authors in 29 regions worldwide, only 12 papers were chosen to present at the conference, and matched with 12 experts as discussants. An additional 12 papers were displayed during the poster session and presented by doctoral students or postdoctoral researchers.

In her opening remarks, Baruch Provost Linda Essig declared that "Baruch is a leader in climate finance," a sentiment that was echoed by several attendees.

"This is a great networking opportunity to meet qualified people working in climate finance," said Anastassia Vilderson, a PhD candidate from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, who had a paper in the poster session. "A very small percentage of submissions were accepted, so we know the research presented here is of high quality."

"I specialize in climate finance research, and there are very few conferences for scholars in this area," said Nikolaus Hastreiter, a doctoral candidate from the London School of Economics who also had a paper in the poster session. Hastreiter, who attended from Columbia University, where he is a visiting scholar, added that he had already been approached by another scholar in attendance about joining forces on a possible research project.

Daniel Garrett, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and a member of the conference's program committee who decided on which papers were accepted, said his presence there was crucial to his academic career. Some of the colleagues who will probably be asked by Wharton to write Garrett a tenure letter-a letter in support of his application for academic tenure-are several of the renowned senior academics who are also taking part in the conference, Garrett explained.

Garrett added that he was already looking forward to collaborating with the Zicklin School's Lin Peng and Leonard Kostovetsky: "We're going to combine their climate change attention data with my own local bond issuance data to see what we can learn."

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* This copy originally appeared in Zicklin News. Visit the Zicklin School of Business to read about its undergraduate and graduate academic programs.