Conference Agenda

Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).

Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 14th May 2024, 02:44:40pm EDT

 
 
Session Overview
Session
Track W3-5: ESG in Financial Intermediation
Time:
Wednesday, 22/May/2024:
1:45pm - 2:30pm

Session Chair: Jawad M. Addoum, Cornell University
Discussant: Sehoon Kim, University of Florida
Location: Room 1212


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Presentations

Business as Usual: Bank Climate Commitments, Lending, and Engagement

Parinitha {Pari} Sastry1, Emil Vernet2

1Columbia Business School; 2MIT Sloan

This paper studies the impact of voluntary climate commitments by banks on their lending activity. We use administrative data on the universe of bank lending from 19 European countries. There is strong selection into commitments, with increased participation by the largest banks and banks with the most pre-existing exposure to high-polluting industries. Setting a commitment leads to a marked boost in a lender’s ESG rating. Lenders reduce credit in sectors they have targeted as high priority for decarbonization. However, climate-aligned banks do not change their lending or loan pricing differentially compared to banks without climate commitments, suggesting they are not actively divesting. We can reject that climate aligned lenders divest from mining firms by more than 0.36% and from firms in targeted sectors by more than 2.6%. Firm borrowers are no more likely to set climate targets after their lender sets a climate target, which casts doubt on active engagement by lenders. These results call into question the efficacy of voluntary commitments.


Sastry-Business as Usual-1418.pdf


 
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