Impact of Climate Change on Asset Prices and Investment Management
THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE ON FINANCE
The main research goals of this research strand are to:
- 1) Identify the possible impacts of climate change (due to physical and transition risk) on economic output
- 2) Identify the possible impacts of climate change (due to physical and transition risk) on different asset classes and industrial sectors
- 3) Construct optimal climate-risk-aware portfolios and strategies
- 4) Estimate the ‘climate beta’
- 5) Estimate the climate risk premium
- 6) Assess the channels through which climate risk (physical and transition) can affect the financial system and, as a consequence, the real economy
- 7) Develop internally coherent and financially grounded climate stress tests and scenario analyses
What This Research Strand Is About?
This research strand looks at the many ways in which climate change can affect the prices of equity and debt assets, via the distinct channels of transition and physical climate risk.
The Size-of-the-Pie Effect
The aim of the first line of research in this strand is to ascertain which aggregate output losses one can expect from climate change and from our response to it. These aggregate losses affect valuation by reducing the cashflows available for the holders of securities. It is a size-of-the-pie effect: as the pie is reduced, so will, on average, the slices that can be carved from it. State-of-the-art Integrated Assessment Models are used for the task.
Sectoral Effects
Equally, if not more, important are the sectoral effects of the decarbonization transition. Even if a diversified portfolio may suffer limited climate-related losses (because of the gains among winners compensating for the losses among phased-out sectors), one can expect a major reallocation of investments and a major revaluation across sectors. A second line of research is therefore devoted to this sectoral analysis.
The Climate Beta
Apart from a few obvious cases, it is a moot empirical question which sectors will benefit and which will suffer from a green transition. The estimation of this ‘climate beta’ is an additional research programme in the main strand, and is key to the construction of diversified portfolios, to factor (‘smart-beta’) investing, and to understanding the sign of the risk premium a security will attract. Several investigation techniques (from NLP to statistical techniques and traditional bottom-up analysis) are used for the task.The presence within EHEC-Risk Climate Impact Institute of faculty members with past academic experience in the hard sciences is a unique asset in the adaptation of the existing IAMs to the task at hand. It also has an established track record in the construction of robust portfolios and efficient indices.
The Climate Risk Premium
A related line of research is focussed on the estimation of the sign (and, if possible, the magnitude) of the climate risk premium. It is not immediately clear whether climate losses are more likely to be incurred in periods of low or high economic activity, and this will determine the sign of the climate risk premium. An understanding of a security’s exposure to the climate risk factor, and of the degree of compensation that this exposure attracts is of key importance for climate-aware investing.
Climate Risk and Financial Crises
Asset prices can be affected (at the aggregate or sectoral level) not only by fundamental shocks, but also by the reverberations of financial crises onto the real economy. This raises the question of whether and to what extent climate-related losses (physical or regulatory) can stress the portfolios of Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs) and sow the seeds for banking crises. The focus of this line of research is therefore on the identification and quantification of the exposure of the portfolios of banks and other SIFIs to climate-vulnerable assets, and on the existence or otherwise of conditions (such as leverage, concentration and synthetic exposure) that can make these institutions particularly fragile.
Stress Testing and Scenario Analysis
The possible outcomes for the economy and asset prices are best explored via scenario analysis and, from a prudential perspective, stress testing. An important line of research of the first strand is therefore devoted to the application of state-of-the-art techniques (such as Bayesian nets) to explore a range of plausible and possible outcomes.
This line of research organically links with the second major research strand, which looks at how finance can influence the decarbonization transition.
The programme Impact of Climate Change on Asset Prices and Investment Management is led by Riccardo Rebonato, Scientifc Director of the EDHEC-Risk Climate Impact Institute and Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School. Riccardo holds doctorates in Nuclear Engineering and Condensed Matter Physics. He has held senior positions at Edinburgh University, Oxford University and Imperial College, London, as well as at some of the world’s leading international financial institutions, and served on the boards of ISDA and GARP. He has written 10 books on finance and political economics; his latest book “How to Think About Climate Change” (Cambridge University Press) deals with using economics to tackle climate change. The Journal of Portfolio Management named him 2022’s “PMR Quant Researcher of the Year”.
About EDHEC
Operating from campuses in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, EDHEC is one of the world’s top 15 business schools. Fully international and directly connected to the business world, EDHEC commands a strong reputation for research excellence and the ability to train entrepreneurs and managers capable of breaking new ground. EDHEC functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and produces innovative solutions valued by businesses. The School’s teaching is inspired by its research work and a focus on “learning by doing”, all with the aim of equipping people with the skills to succeed in business.
