PEGFA Research Seminars 2024: Arrieta Paredes & Nikolaidi

26th Mar 2024 1pm - 2:30pm

Greenwich Campus

HH102

The Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA) invites you to its Research Seminar Series 2023.

The final seminar in the series will feature PEGFA experts Dr Mary-Paz Arrieta Paredes and Dr Maria Nikolaidi.

The MS Teams meeting can be accessed here.

Mary-Paz Arrieta Paredes will be presenting "ESG investing, reputation and Government Policies in British SMEs: Why does firmographics matter?”

This study examines the impact of firmographics on SMEs' attitudes towards ESG investing in the UK. The research uses the British Business Bank (BBB) survey to analyze the potential of the ESG section and evaluate the relation between innovation adoption and ESG investing popularity among SMEs. The study differentiates between five regions and examines co-factors such as external finance, firm age, gender, and minority leadership. The study also examines the functions of government policies in sustainability-oriented processes.

Preliminary results for years 2021-23 show that implementing ESG because of reputation and brand is positively affected by government policy changes, over 8 times. However, implementing ESG for competitive advantage has a negative impact in the South of the country. Government expenditure is also significant but not robust.

At this stage, it appears that reputational factors are the main influencing factors for SMEs supporting ESG investing. However, if these firms were to implement ESG criteria based on reputation, government policies would have been instrumental in encouraging them.

Maria Nikolaidi will discuss  "Environmental regulation, macrofinancial stability and climate policy mixes".

Environmental regulation has a key role to play in achieving the transition to a green economy. However, an abrupt implementation of environmental regulation can have adverse implications for macrofinancial stability, undermining the effectiveness of regulatory initiatives. This can be the case because the introduction of environmental regulatory restrictions can lead to stranded carbon-intensive capital that can affect the ability of firms to repay debt with feedback effects on the macroeconomy. In addition, the implications of environmental regulation might differ significantly depending on whether regulations are put in place in an isolated manner or in conjunction with other policies. In this paper, we deploy an ecological stock-flow consistent (E-SFC) model to analyse (i) how environmental regulation can affect macrofinancial stability and (ii) how the effectiveness of environmental regulation can be affected when regulatory initiatives are combined with green fiscal policy. We categorise regulatory interventions based on their credibility. We show that the short-run disruptive macrofinancial effects of environmental regulation are lower when regulatory commitments are credible. We also show that, when environmental regulation is combined with green subsidies, the reduction of emissions is reinforced and the adverse macrofinancial stability effects are reduced.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Please find the entire programme for this year's Research Seminar Series here.

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