This post links to comments submitted to the US Department of Labor regarding their proposed rule on prudence and loyalty in selecting plan investments and exercising shareholder rights
Carbon pricing is a pro-market move. If you believe in markets, you should be fighting for it.
A belief in markets should not be dogmatic like a belief in Santa Claus; it should be based on a clear understanding of the necessary conditions for markets to serve the overall good, and a clear understanding of what can cause them to fail.
Six questions to ask about your ESG policy
“Hold on a moment”, you may be thinking. “Didn’t you just write a post about the five tests of an ESG policy?”
Well, yes I did. But sometimes we need to revisit things. And it turns out there are not just five tests, but six.
The UK pension community’s big roll out of climate scenario analysis: what will it achieve?
Scenario analysis is a valuable risk tool, but unfamiliar to many investors. It’s about the particular, not the general; qualitative as well as quantitative; and it’s about the journey not the destination.
The Financial Times says ESG investing is dangerous. I disagree.
It is wrong to attack ESG as a smokescreen, distracting from effective policy action. Public policy is the highest priority, but it alone will not be enough. We need investor action too. Don’t write off every investment manager as irredeemably part of the problem.
What can’t be measured well can still be managed. On climate impact, it needs to be.
Better measurement of ESG factors is important. But it’s not enough. We can’t afford to wait for perfect measurement before taking other action.
Best practice in ESG investing: not just the sum of the parts
ESG becoming mainstream could just mean splicing together the standard investment tradition with social responsibility, hoping not to do too much damage to the integrity of either in the process. Best practice, though, is more than that; it is a synthesis.
ESG investing: how different is the US?
The US is different when it comes to ESG investing. The key to understanding that difference may lie in the unspoken context, in the things that are taken for granted.
Marking one hundred years of ignoring Frank Knight’s point about risk and uncertainty
It is 100 years since Frank Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty and Profit first highlighted that some risks are quantifiable and others are not. But Knight’s main conclusion is widely, and wrongly, ignored.
It’s handy to express natural and human capital in financial terms – here are four reasons that’s tough to do
It’s handy, and often necessary, to look at ESG factors through a financial lens. But it only captures part of the picture.