Date: May 3, 2024
Time: 8 a.m.
Location: UC Santa Cruz main campus University Center, Alumni Room
In-person workshop on Friday, May 3rd, 2024, UC Santa Cruz main campus
Organized by UCSC’s Center for Analytical Finance (CAFIN) with support from The Center for Coastal Climate Resilience (CCCR) and UC Investments
Climate change is already affecting our everyday lives and mitigation and adaptation actions need to be taken now. Many technical advances have been made in climate solutions, but their implementation needs funding. How can we bring more private sector funds? We will discuss policies, evidence, and theory and conclude with a brainstorm on practical solutions. Join us! Please register before April 16 if possible.
The registration for this event is now closed.
Limited funding is available for UC System faculty and graduate students who would like to attend, please inquire by sending an e-mail to gbhale@ucsc.edu.
If you have any questions, please email cafin@ucsc.edu.
This is our second conference on these issues. The first was held in June 2023. You can read about it in our bulletin or Forbes coverage. This year, we particularly want to encourage participation by University of California faculty, researchers, and affiliates.
Meet our conference participants:
Galina Hale, Professor of Economics and Coastal Science and Policy, University of California, Santa Cruz
Galina Hale is a Professor of Economics at UC Santa Cruz. She served as a Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and as an assistant professor of economics at Yale University. Galina’s current research interests focus on attracting mainstream finance to climate solutions, the sustainability of the global food system, and international financial stability, especially with respect to climate risks. Galina has published over 30 articles in leading economics and finance peer-reviewed journals. She serves on multiple editorial boards and presents her work regularly at scholarly and policy meetings worldwide.
Nirvikar Singh, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz
Nirvikar Singh is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also co-directs the Center for Analytical Finance. He has been a member of the Advisory Group to the Finance Minister of India on G-20 matters; a consultant to the Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India; and a member of an Expert Group of the Government of Punjab for revitalizing the state’s economy.
Katharyne Mitchell, Dean of Social Sciences, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz
Katharyne Mitchell is Dean of the Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Trained as a geographer at UC Berkeley, her current research focuses on the ethics, practices and politics of church sanctuary in the protection of asylum claimants in Europe. Recent books include Making Workers: Radical Geographies of Education (2018), the Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration (2019), and the Routledge Handbook of Critical Philanthropy and Humanitarianism (2023). Mitchell has been a Visiting Professor at St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, and an Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellow at the National University of Singapore. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, a Brocher Foundation Fellowship in Switzerland in 2019, a Max Planck Fellowship in Göttingen, Germany, in 2023 and an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award in 2024. Mitchell is the author or editor of 13 books and special issues and over a hundred articles and chapters, and is recipient of grants from the MacArthur Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Fulbright Foundation, and National Science Foundation.
Agata Kotkowska, Visiting researcher, Institute of European Studies
With over two decades of professional experience within the European Commission, Agata Kotkowska brings insights into European regional, energy, and environmental policies. Trained as an economist, her expertise focuses on sustainable finance, innovative financial instruments, green budgeting, and effective utilization of European public funding for the green transition towards carbon-neutral Europe.
Currently affiliated with the Institute of European Studies as a visiting researcher and fellow of the European Commission, she is exploring the financial innovations essential for the private capital market to leverage investments in support of biodiversity requirements in Europe and across the globe.
The EU Fellows Program enables staff from the EU Commission or Parliament to spend up to one year as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California in Berkeley. During the fellowship, Agata carries out research on a project related to her work, as well as undertakes outreach activities, thus acting as “ambassador” for the EU.
Ayako Yasuda, Professor of Finance, University of California, Davis
Professor Ayako Yasuda is currently Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Management at University of California at Davis, Fellow of the Institute for the Environment, and Fellow of the Private Equity Research Consortium. Professor Yasuda’s research focuses on venture capital; private equity; impact funds; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues; social entrepreneurship; and long-horizon institutional investors. She has published her research in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and The Review of Financial Studies, and her expertise on entrepreneurship, private equity, and venture capital has been cited in news publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Nikkei, the Financial Times, and The New York Times. She earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford in 2001, and a B.A. in Quantitative Economics (Dean’s Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa) from Stanford in 1993. Before joining the faculty of UC Davis, she was a faculty at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and earlier in her career, she was a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs. She co- authored an acclaimed MBA textbook Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation (now in 3 rd edition). Her paper “Impact Investing” (Journal of Financial Economics 2021) won the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University’s Moskowitz Prize for outstanding research on sustainable and responsible investing.
Francois Koulischer, University of Luxembourg
Francois Koulischer is assistant professor at the University of Luxembourg. His research focuses on sustainable finance, monetary policy, and financial intermediation. François holds a PhD from the Free University of Brussels and previously worked at the Luxembourg and French central banks.
Jane Danyu Zhang, Ph.D. candidate, UCLA
Jane Danyu Zhang is a finance Ph.D. candidate at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. She will be joining the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business as an Assistant Professor of Finance in September 2024. Her research interests are household finance and behavioral finance. She is particularly interested in financial intermediation, asset management, sustainable finance, and the intersection between law and finance. Part of her research studies how the political environment impacts the availability of ESG options to individuals through the judicial channel. Her research aims to better understand institutional frictions and behavioral obstacles in financial investment.
Christian Kontz, PhD student, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Christian Kontz is a fourth-year PhD student in Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He does research at the intersection of asset pricing and corporate finance. He currently spends a lot of time thinking about the implications of climate change on corporate behavior and investment. Prior to Stanford, he was a predoctoral fellow at Princeton University. He obtained his BSc in Economics from the University of Hamburg and a Master’s in International Trade, Finance, and Development from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
Yawen Jiao, Associate Professor of Finance at University of California, Riverside
Yawen Jiao is an associate professor of finance at the University of California, Riverside. She earned her Ph.D. in finance from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Her research interests include institutional investing, institutional and individual investors, corporate finance and corporate governance, and behavioral finance. She has published widely in prestigious academic journals in these areas and presented in numerous university workshops and academic conferences. Her research has been awarded the best paper award in Managerial Finance at the Northern Finance Association meetings and the SSHRC award.
Xintong Li, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, San Diego
Xintong Li is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of California, San Diego, where she learns and researches in the fields of macroeconomics, finance, and environmental economics. Her recent work focuses on firms’ financing and innovation in transitioning to a more sustainable and resilient future. Her research pays special attention to the complexity of investor preferences, the uncertainty of physical risks, and the design of industrial policies in this transition process. Prior to her doctoral studies, Xintong earned a Master of Science in Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago. She also gained valuable research experience in systems science during her undergraduate years at Beijing Normal University. In her free time, Xintong loves to geek out over the latest engineering advancements in climate technologies. From carbon capture and storage to vertical farming, she’s always eager to learn about innovative solutions and ponder their potential impact on the economy and the environment.
Giacomo Rondina, Associate Teaching Professor, University of California, San Diego
Giacomo Rondina is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California at San Diego. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007. Before joining UCSD in 2017, he was faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His work is in the field of macroeconomics, with a focus on informational theories of economic fluctuations, rational asset price bubbles, and, more recently, on the intersection between macroeconomics, environmental economics, and finance.
Bhavyaa Sharma, Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Santa Cruz
Bhavyaa Sharma is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her primary fields are Macroeconomics and Financial Economics, focusing on climate change. Her current research is centered on investigating how firms, households, and financial institutions make decisions regarding climate risk mitigation and adaptation in the context of (i) lack of information about climate change and (ii) behavioral biases such as under-reaction in response to the available information. She was a Dissertation Fellow at the Federal Reserve Board in 2022 and at the New York Federal Reserve and the San Francisco Federal Reserve in 2023. Before starting her Ph.D., she worked as a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, an autonomous research institute under the Ministry of Finance in India, and as a Graduate Intern at the Department of Economic Policy and Research at the Reserve Bank of India.
Shisham Adhikari, PhD candidate, University of California, Davis
Shisham Adhikari (She/her/hers), a third-year PhD candidate in Economics at UC Davis, specializes in macroeconomic policies facilitating the green in researching how government policies can shape incentives for specific private agents, thereby inducing broad equilibrium effects to achieve desired environmental outcomes.
Jon Qian, Sloan Fellow, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Sloan Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Prior to Stanford, Jon was the head of strategic transactions at Dai-ichi Life. Jon has a B.S. in Actuarial Studies from The University of Melbourne.