CDSB students Bennet Janssen and Youpeng Zhang receive the Impact Award

CDSB students Bennet Janssen and Youpeng Zhang received the Impact Award for their paper “Beyond Consensus: ESG Ratings Divergence and Sustainable Investments” at the Liechtenstein Workshop of Sustainable Finance 2025. The Impact Award is presented by the LIFE Climate Foundation Liechtenstein to recognize research that demonstrates the most impressive theoretical impact approach or significant potential for real-world application in climate protection and sustainability.

Their study explores how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating divergence between different rating providers influences retail investors’ decisions to invest in sustainable funds. Drawing on a large-scale survey and framed choice experiment with more than 2,000 German retail investors, the authors provide causal evidence on how rating quality and disagreement between ESG agencies shape investors’ investment behavior.

Congratulations to Bennet and Youpeng on this achievement!