Course Summary
Syllabus
Reviews
Current and Past Guest Speakers
Climate change presents one of the central challenges of our generation, with a wide range of effects on financial markets and the broader economy. At the same time, financial markets play an important role in financing the transition to a net-zero economy. In this class, we study the interaction between climate change and firms, financial markets, energy markets, regulators, and policy makers.
Given that climate change and sustainability issues more generally are affecting nearly every aspect of the corporate, regulatory, and non-profit worlds, the class will be valuable for students with a wide range of backgrounds and career goals, whether they are directly interested in climate and sustainability issues or primarily want to gain a better understanding of how these issues influence more traditional roles in the corporate and financial sector.
The class is very applied in its outlook, but we will frame the analysis through the lens of economic frameworks that help students think through the interactions between climate change and the broader economy in a systematic way. The objective is that the broad selection of topics and guest speakers will provide a variety of complementary perspectives on how climate change will shape economics and finance over the coming decades.
Leaders from across finance, industry, government, and research have joined the class as guest speakers.
- Kristian Blickle—Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
- Keith Breslauer—Managing Partner, Patron Capital
- Ed Byrns—Head of Weather and Climate, Atrium
- Lia Cairone—New York City Office of Management and Budget
- Jake Carr—Director of Research, Moody's Analytics
- Martina Cheung—President, S&P Global Ratings
- Scott Corwin—U.S. Leader for Sustainability & Climate Change, Deloitte
- Joseph H. Davis—Chief Economist & Head of Investment Strategy Group, Vanguard
- Rui Dong—Senior Vice President, The D. E. Shaw Group
- Linda Eling-Lee—Founding Director, MSCI Sustainability Institute
- Stephan Feilhauer—Partner, Antin Infrastructure Partners
- Michael Ferguson—Managing Director, S&P Global Ratings
- Samim Ghamami—Chief Economist, New York State Insurance Fund
- Christian Hannemann—German Permanent Mission to the United Nations
- Alex Inkster—Partner, Kimmeridge
- Hyeyoon Jung—Financial Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
- Ilya Khaykin—Partner, Oliver Wyman
- Zeev Krieger—Co-Founder & CEO, Turtle Hill Capital
- Chris Larsen—Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Ripple
- Xiaodi Li—Economist, Moody's Analytics
- Anastasia Marceau—Managing Director, Climate & Environment, Accenture
- Matthias Pitkowitz—Founder & CEO, EQX Biome
- Lukasz Pomorski—Managing Director & Head of ESG Research, AQR Capital Management
- Paull Randt—Vice President, Citi
- Eugenie Schwob—Sustainability Risk Manager, BlackRock
- Chavon Sutton—Senior Investment Director, Cambridge Associates
- Mervyn Tang—Head of Sustainability Strategy, APAC, Schroders
- Lucia Tian—Head of Clean Energy & Decarbonization Technologies, Google
- Olivia Vitali—Managing Director, Intrinsic Exchange Group
- Pascal Weel—Director, ING Americas
- Emily Weng—Director, BlackRock
- Michael Yamoah—Director, EOS at Federated Hermes
Course Summary
Financial Economics of Climate and Sustainability (FECS) is a global, collaborative online doctoral course that brings together PhD students, postdocs, faculty, and researchers from hundreds of institutions worldwide to study the rapidly growing field of climate finance. The course is co-taught by a group of leading scholars from universities including NYU Stern, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Wharton, Stanford, Oxford, Imperial College London, and Zurich, and is organized around a series of two-hour synchronous core sessions delivered over Zoom, complemented by shared readings, recorded elective sessions, and ongoing discussion among participants. Each session is led by a different expert and works through several research papers in a specific area, spanning climate science and economic theory, asset pricing, sustainable investing, corporate finance, and household finance, as well as newer topics such as banking, insurance, and biodiversity. By pooling teaching across institutions and opening the classroom to participants around the world, FECS aims to train the next generation of climate finance scholars and educators and to build a lasting, collaborative research community in the field.
Course Summary
▶ Online Class with Video Lectures
This PhD course introduces students to research topics in household finance and climate finance, familiarizes them with the empirical methods used in these literatures, and helps them develop their own research ideas and projects. The semester is organized into two blocks: the first focuses on household finance, and the second turns to climate and nature finance. Each block opens with an introductory lecture that frames the main questions, settings, and methods, followed by topic classes covering selected areas of empirical household, climate, and nature finance, with an emphasis on research conducted by NYU Stern faculty. Each session pairs a broad overview with a closer discussion of selected papers, including both seminal contributions and current work, using them to understand the substantive questions and to study the empirical strategies that are useful across the field. Students contribute through short paper presentations, and the final class is reserved for student research presentations, with the goal of helping students develop their own projects in a collaborative setting.