Graduate Courses
Graduate Courses
Climate Finance: An Economic and Financial Approach to Climate Change
Climate change presents one of the central challenges of our generation, with a wide range of possible effects on financial markets and the broader economy. This class: (i) Thinks about the effect of climate change on the overall economy; (ii) Studies the risks and opportunities that climate change holds for firms and financial institutions (distinguishing between a variety of types of risk, including transition risk and regulatory risk); (iii) Discusses how financial markets can help transfer and hedge climate risk; (iv) Explores the economic and financial foundations of potential climate regulation; (v) Analyzes how climate risk interacts with other risks, such as the risk of future pandemics.
Climate Science: Realities & Risks of a Changing Climate
This course will focus on climate science - the basics of the earth system, how it is observed and modeled, how has it changed in the recent and distant past, how it might change in the future under natural and human influences, and what impacts those changes might have on ecosystems and society. The most recent US government and UN assessment reports will serve as texts, supplemented by the original research literature and media coverage. Critical thinking will be emphasized throughout.
Global Supply Chain Decarbonization
After generations of global trade growth, an increasing awareness of climate change and other environmental externalities has triggered a global movement toward decarbonization, and in many cases, localization or re-shoring of supply chains. Operations and supply management professionals that continue to operate dirty global supply chains do so at the risk of sanctions from governments, investors, and employees. However, lowering the carbon profile of global supply chains will be a massive undertaking. This class presents a sequence of two dozen techniques for decarbonizing supply chains, including management decision-making and optimization tools that reconcile carbon objectives with cost, service level, and other conventional supply chain management objectives. Real life case studies allow students to implement each of the techniques in the context of a real-life situation and study the opportunities and challenges of decarbonizing global supply chains.
Managing Climate, Cyber, Geopolitical, and Financial Risk
Businesses and governments now face a growing and immediate array of nonfinancial risks, including climate-related, cyber and operational, and geopolitical risks. Precisely because these critical risks are hard to measure and analyze, firms are putting new resources - people and money - to work to anticipate, manage and mitigate them. To address cybersecurity risks, for example, JP Morgan alone has 3000 employees and spends $600 million annually. Firms are only starting to grapple with existential climate-related risks. And startups are mushrooming to provide assessments to businesses. This course will study these risks alongside financial risks. It will outline frameworks for measuring, assessing and analyzing them, and for actions needed to meet them. We will examine case studies of climate, cyber, and geopolitical risks, including from current events. Finally, we will study whether and how the information in financial markets can both inform the assessment of these risks and potentially provide tools to transfer, insure against, or hedge them.
Driving Market Solutions for Clean Energy
This course is designed to provide students with a rich understanding of the economy-wide energy transitions that are needed in the United States to help curb climate change, with an emphasis on how the private sector can drive such changes. As relevant background, the course will cover energy-related macroeconomic concepts and trends, and provide environmental and international context. It will draw on the instructor's diverse experiences, readings and other media, classroom discussions, case studies, visiting speakers, and group projects, to explore and debate how such ambitious but necessary transformations may be brought about.
Leading Innovation to Address Climate Change
Climate change is the greatest existential threat of our time. This class is designed to educate students on leading action to combat climate change and achieve climate adaptation through innovation and accelerating the diffusion of innovations. We will cover a broad range of science-based climate tech innovations that are available for action in domains including power generation, buildings, transportation, industry, agriculture, and land use. In addition, we will explore innovations for climate adaptation, enabling technologies that are accelerating climate innovation, and speculative new approaches such as geoengineering. We will develop a playbook on how to: a) assess an early-stage climate technology innovation, b) assess the market potential, and c) create a plan to accelerate innovation diffusion. The class will enrich students' understanding of the overall climate change problem, the interrelated systems view needed to address climate change effectively, the diverse stakeholders, the role of government/public policy, and the opportunity for enormous social impact through action on climate.
Marketing and Sustainability
This course aims to provide a broad range of tools and frameworks for understanding how businesses can interact with issues related to sustainability, taking a marketing perspective. In particular, we examine how traditional marketing strategies can be incorporated into and/or modified in domains in which sustainability is critical. By necessity, it is essential to not only account for the role of firms and customers, but of government, non-profit organizations, employees, and other stakeholders. This course will draw upon cases, guest speakers, academic and industry research, and recent articles and events. In addition, we will have two “live cases” presented by industry representatives. The final course deliverable will be a marketing plan focused on a firm strategy that can increase the sustainability of the firm’s actions while also creating stakeholder value.
Renewable Energy and Electric Vehicle Industry
We analyze renewable energy and electric vehicles industries from the perspective of entrepreneurs, managers, and investors by examining the following: (1) Financial statements of renewable energy companies and electric vehicles companies; (2) Their business drivers and trends; (3) Simplified financial models of renewable energy projects. Visit http://www.dangode.com/renewables/ for details.
Sustainability for Competitive Advantage
In this course, students will develop a effective leadership perspective through pursuit of the following learning objectives: 1) to become familiar with the key environmental and social issues affecting business today, 2) to understand the evolution of corporate response - from compliance to engagement to innovation, 3) to begin to develop some of the skills required for leading in this new social and political environment (e.g. multi-stakeholder management), 4) to explore the efficiencies and innovations being developed by corporate leaders in pursuit of sustainability, 5) to explore innovations in finance (true cost accounting, net positive value, social impact bonds), and 6) to become familiar with the latest consumer insight research on sustainability. In short, this course is multi-disciplinary, and seeks to integrate across the functions of the firm to arrive at an effective firm-wide leadership sensibility.
Sustainable Finance: Innovation and Trends in Capital Markets
The goal of the course is to analyze the interplay of Sustainability and Finance and the related new risks and opportunities. In fact, the intersection of ESG and Financial issues generates new risks over longer risk horizons, which should be factored into company valuation frameworks from fundamental analysis. However, understanding, measuring, and pricing these new sources of risk, and also assessing the related opportunities, presents challenges due to the wide breadth of ESG-related issues coupled with data limitations.