The Financial Ecosystem: The Role of Finance in Achieving Sustainability

✍ Scribed by Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson

• Publisher: Springer International Publishing;Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 436
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance
• Edition: 1st ed. 2019
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Long term asset owners and managers, while seeking high risk-adjusted returns and efficiently allocating scarce financial capital to the highest value economic activities, have the essential and formidable role of ensuring the sustainability of return. But generally accepted financial accounting methods are ill-equipped to provide clear signals of the risks and opportunities created by scarce natural and human capital. Hence many investment managers in global financial markets, while performing due diligence on portfolio companies, examine metrics of non-financial performance, especially environmental, social and governance (ESG) indicators.

Broken into three sections, this book outlines the rationale for and methods used in six areas where financial acumen has been harnessed to the goal of combining monetary return with long run sustainability. The first section offers an introduction to the role of finance in achieving sustainability, and includes an overview of the six areas—sustainable investing, impact investing, decentralized finance, conservation finance, and cleantech finance. The methods section of the book illustrates analytical tools and specialized data sources essential to those interested in increasing the level of social responsibility embedded in economic activity. The applications section describes and differentiates each of the six areas and their roles in advancing specific measures of sustainability.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii
The Role of Finance in Achieving Sustainability (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 1-18
The Financial Ecosystem (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 19-46
Governing the Corporation (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 47-81
Accounting for Sustainability: Frameworks for the Aggregation of Financial and Non-financial Metrics (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 83-109
Signals of Scarcity and Financial Performance (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 111-136
Cost-Benefit Analysis and Discounting (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 137-159
The Monetization of Natural Capital in Corporate Investment (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 161-180
Human Capital and the Returns to Stakeholder Relations (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 181-203
Capital Structure and Social Capital: Diverse Forms of Investment (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 205-224
Sustainable Investing and Asset Allocation at Global Scale (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 225-251
Impact Investing (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 253-282
Decentralized Finance (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 283-310
Conservation Finance and Payment for Ecosystem Services (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 311-338
Financing Clean Technology Innovation and the Transition to Renewable Energy (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 339-368
The Cooperative Movement and Social Enterprise (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 369-391
Toward the Common Wealth and the Common Weal (Satyajit Bose, Guo Dong, Anne Simpson)....Pages 393-397
Back Matter ....Pages 399-427

✦ Subjects

Finance; Development Finance; Investments and Securities; International Finance