Global PhD Course: Financial Economics of Climate and Sustainability

Finance will be instrumental in facilitating the transition to lower-carbon economies. This collaborative global doctoral reading group prepares faculty, post-docs, and doctoral students to train the next generation of finance professionals.

Why this collaborative global doctoral reading group?

Climate change is one of the most critical issues facing the planet and will require massive flows of capital. Finance will be instrumental in facilitating the transition to lower-carbon economies. Business schools need to be able to train the next generation of finance professionals. To do this, we will need far more professors trained to teach climate finance. Financial Economics of Climate and Sustainability (FECS) seeks to be an important, timely, and catalytic development in the climate finance space designed to support the development of the next generation of scholars and educators and to create a community of researchers in this field.

A global reading group, delivered locally

FECS has both global and local elements. The twelve, two-hour synchronous Core Sessions, taught by scholars at nine universities, are available to students globally, but the experience is customized locally at each participating school by a local faculty convener. Schools determine locally whether and how to offer the reading group. At some schools, a version of FECS is offered for credit, and local instructors may hold additional sessions and set course requirements (typically a paper). At schools where a course is not available for credit, local conveners may permit students to audit the course, offer enrichment sessions, or supervise independent research projects. Contact your local faculty coordinator for details.

Business Schools for Climate Leadership

To join us in FECS: FECS is available to scholars across the world.  There are three simple steps to join.  First, a faculty member agrees to be the local faculty coordinator.   See the FECS Coordinator pages for more information and to apply as a faculty coordinator, please FILL OUT THIS FORM.   Second, local faculty coordinators collect the names and email details of participants and submit them to FECS.  Third, before our first class on 4 Feb 2025, FECS will send the participants information on joining, including details on the course Dropbox, Zoom links, and Slack channel.

Format and Timing of Sessions: FECS will be taught from February 4  to April 29, 2025 on Tuesdays from 11:00-13:00 EST/EDT.  Note that because of differing national practices of adoption of daylight savings times (e.g., US-Mar 9; UK/Euro-Mar 30), check below for weeks where your session may be at a locally different time.

  • Feb 4 – Introduction to climate science
  • Feb 11 – Climate, Sustainability, Economic and Finance Theory 1
  • Feb 18 – Climate, Sustainability, Economic and Finance Theory 2
  • Feb 25  – Climate, Accounting, and Corporate Carbon Disclosures
  • March 4 – Climate and Asset Pricing (Theory)
  • March 11* – Climate and Asset Pricing (Empirics) (Note: Class at 11:00 EDT; for other participants check local time).
  • March 18 – OFF, no class
  • March 25* – Sustainable Finance: Investing in Equity (Note: Class at 11:00 EDT; for other participants check local time).
  • April 1 – Sustainable Finance 2: Investing in Debt
  • April 8 – Climate and Corporate Finance
  • April 15 – Climate and Financial Institutions
  • April 22– Climate and Household Finance
  • April 29 – Wrap up and Discussion

R2025 Reading List

The reading list for Spring 2025 will be available in December 2024.  The reading list for 2024 can be found here.

Format and Timing of Core Sessions

The weekly two-hour core sessions will be held on Tuesdays in synchronous Zoom sessions. This is a global synchronous reading group, so no time is ideal; our classes are Tuesdays from 11 am-1 pm EST/EDT. (Note that because of differing national practices of adoption of daylight savings times (e.g., US-Mar 9; UK/Euro-Mar 30), check the schedule for weeks where your session may be at a locally different time.)  Each Core Session will provide an overview of the topic and discuss 4-5 research papers, but discussions may be augmented locally at your school.

New: Faculty discuss FECS at ASW Conference

Members of the core teaching team discuss the logic and content of the course—and the field of climate finance—in this session from the 2024 Accounting in a Sustainable World conference session.

Please find more information here.