Join SFI’s monthly seminar on the first or second Thursday of the month from 4:00 - 5:00 pm PT to meet our faculty and fellows and learn more about our ongoing research projects. We’ll cover innovative policy and financial mechanisms designed to rapidly decarbonize the global economy.

Up next on Thursday, December 5:

In this seminar, Gaku Morio and Isabella Yoon present the findings of their recent study. This study examines the disparities among corporate environmental sustainability as communicated, performed, and evaluated, using a natural language processing (NLP)-based tool.

They analyze responsibility reports from 293 publicly traded U.S. firms spanning from 2010 to 2021, along with their decarbonization performance and sustainability ratings, focusing particularly on the environmental score (ES). Their research explores corporate environmental communication (EC), which they also refer to as the "vocalness" of firms on climate topics, and its relationship with their environmental performance (EP). 

Their findings reveal significant discrepancies in how firms communicate their sustainability efforts, with firms tending to be more vocal when their EP is poor. Companies are more vocal about climate commitment and opportunities rather than about risks or reduction targets—the latter being areas that are relatively easy to verify. This observed discrepancy has become more pronounced since the Paris Agreement, although individual firms' adoption of such practices is less impactful. The analysis further suggests that while EC plays a minor but significant role in enhancing sustainability ratings when firms' emission levels are high, it does not fundamentally alter the relationship between EP and sustainability ratings unless firms become excessively vocal.

Gaku Morio is a Researcher at Hitachi America, Ltd. He received his M.D. in Engineering from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He is interested in natural language processing and applied machine learning, with emphasis on facilitating these technologies to the real-world business/industrial data.

Jungah (Isabella) Yoon joined the University of Otago (Department of Accountancy & Finance) as a Teaching Fellow in July 2023. Prior to this, she had been an integral part of the Department, serving as both a PhD student and a casual Teaching Fellow / tutor. Isabella possesses a deep-seated passion for finance education and additionally contributes as a member of the AKO teaching and learning committee within the department.

Isabella’s research centres on derivatives markets. She is a member of the Derivatives and Quantitative Finance Group and joined the Climate and Energy Finance Group in March 2023.