Marcin Kacperczyk

Imperial College London

Carbon-Transition Risk and Net-Zero Portfolios
November 13, 2023 – 05:15 – 06:30 PM (CET)

This event will take place online only. To join virtually, please register in advance using this link.

Seminar Abstract
Net-zero portfolios (NZP), which aim to reduce carbon footprint exposure to zero by a target date, are becoming a popular vehicle to align investors' incentives with climate scenarios. We characterize the decision and timing to divest companies from NZP using a novel forward-looking measure, distance-to-exit (DTE), which calculates the distance, in years, until a company gets excluded from NZP. Companies with greater DTE values have higher valuation ratios and lower expected returns, consistent with the idea that DTE captures carbon-transition risk. The effect is stronger when climate pressure intensifies, and it is robust to various specification choices.

Speaker Bio
Marcin Kacperczyk is a Professor of Finance at the Imperial College London Business School. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy and Research. In addition, he serves as an Associate Editor of Financial Management, Management Science, Review of Financial Studies and Review of Finance, and is a former Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Kacperczyk’s research focuses mostly on financial markets, financial intermediation, and asset management. His latest work analyses the effects of unconventional monetary policy on asset management industry and corporate sector. He has also written on a broad range of topics such as social norms, short-term debt markets, performance evaluation, labour unions, insider trading, income inequality, and portfolio choice. He has analysed various effects of informed trading in finance. His articles have appeared in Econometrica, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, as well as non-academic outlets such as Bloomberg, Financial Times, Forbes, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week. He has spoken about research on CNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg. He currently holds two highly prestigious research grants: European Research Council Consolidator Grant and Marie Curie Integration Grant. Professor Kacperczyk has been teaching at Imperial College since 2013. Previously he has been appointed at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business and New York University Stern School of Business. He obtained a Ph.D. in finance from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. He has received two student awards for Excellence in Teaching as well as two Faculty Excellence Awards from Imperial College.

Admission information
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