Kogod makes sustainability efforts a priority. Where combating environmental threats was once considered an issue for scientists, it’s clear that every field needs to consider its impact, and organizations must do what they can to adjust to the changing world around them. But as professionals face problems that they’ve never faced before; how can they ensure that they are not only answering today’s sustainability questions but also anticipating tomorrow’s?
The question is on Paul Yoo’s mind as well. Yoo is a new professor of finance at the Kogod School of Business with a research focus on sustainable finance, a field that’s gaining speed to match the urgency of the topics it covers.
“It’s vast,” he said of the discipline. “New questions are coming out much faster than the original questions are being answered. So even if I’m slammed with ongoing research on these topics, new topics will still flow in, and I’ll want to do something about them.”
As a field of research, sustainable finance addresses the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and their financial impact. This can include how a business’s environmental footprint is reported, how ESG commitments influence investor behavior, and how values can determine where consumers spend their money. Yoo is particularly interested in the discipline’s ability to challenge existing notions and connect new ideas to financial concepts.
“What excites me the most is that these seemingly non-financial values have a financial value implication,” he explained. “Since this field is quite new, you find these surprising results that don’t necessarily align with the conventional wisdom. So, then you get to make sense of what you find and connect it to well-known, well-proven ideas.”
When Yoo talks about non-financial values and their financial implications, he’s talking about the issues at the core of sustainability’s values. It’s easy to see the importance of protecting human rights and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s often considered an issue beyond business disciplines. Sustainable finance aims to change that assumption by providing data that shows that making ESG a priority also has economic benefits—that even the most money-motivated businesses should be taking sustainability into account.