The 5th Annual GRASFI Conference

The Global Research Alliance for Sustainable Finance and Investment (GRASFI) is the foremost network for universities leading research on sustainable finance and investment. CSP and the Center of Competence for Sustainable Finance at the University of Zurich co-hosted the network’s 5th Annual Conference in Zurich, 5 - 7 September 2022.

It was the network's first in-person conference since the outbreak of Covid-19 and brought together over 250 professionals from across academia, NGOs, industry and the public sector. Next year’s conference – GRASFI 2023 – will be hosted by Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

From the papers presented, the Academic Committee selected the best papers in five categories. 

Best Paper Award: Cheap Talk in Corporate Climate Commitments: The effectiveness of climate initiatives by Julia Bingler, Mathias Kraus, Markus Leippold and Nicolas Webersinke

Best Paper Award for Transparency for Stakeholders: Which institutional investors drive corporate sustainability? by Marco Ceccarelli, Simon Glossner, Mikael Homanen and Daniel Schmidt

Best Paper Award for Climate Finance Research: Scope 3 Emissions: Data Quality and Machine Learning Prediction Accuracy by Quyen Nguyen, Ivan Diaz-Rainey, Adam Kitto, Ben McNeil, Nic Pittman and Renzhu Zhang

Best Paper Award for Impactful Research: The Optimal Design of Green Securities by Adelina Barbalau and Federica Zeni

Best PhD Paper Award: Nature as a Defense from Disasters: Natural Capital and Municipal Bond Yields by Claudio Rizzi

Runners-up for the Best PhD Award: Pricing Physical Climate Risk in the Cross-Section of Returns by Glen Gostlow and Inflated ESG ratings through socially responsible investing: An inverse relation to sustainable performance by Bram van der Kroft and Dennis Bams

Press release
The official press release, including a summary of the Science Meets Practice sessions, is available as a PDF here. 

Event recap
Read our summary of the conference highlights on Medium here.

Live tweets
Check out live tweets from the event using the hashtag #GRASFI22. 

Full program
View the full program PDF (PDF, 1MB)

Contact
For questions regarding GRASFI 2022, please contact Michaela Reimann, michaela.reimann@bf.uzh.ch