Sustainable Finance (funded until 2021)

In line with the objective of the former Center for Sustainable Society Research (CSS) to broaden the understanding of social and economic institutions and processes of modern societies with regard to sustainability, the working group "Sustainable Finance" focuses on companies and capital markets under changing social and political conditions.

The research interest of the working group "Sustainable Finance" focuses on CSS’ key research subject "Financial Markets" and is directed at two main areas:

On the one hand, the increased interest in Sustainable Finance means that companies are rethinking their management processes and increasingly taking sustainability aspects into account in corporate decisions. This results in research questions for the working group on the implementation of sustainability management in companies and on capital market reactions to improvements in corporate sustainability performance.

On the other hand, the stronger interest in Sustainable Finance has resulted in new requirements for corporate reporting. Capital market participants increasingly need non-financial information related to relevant sustainability issues. In the past, companies were left, at least to a large extent, to provide such information on a voluntary basis. Recently, capital market-oriented companies in the EU have been obliged to report certain non-financial information in their annual financial statements. This raises questions to be explored by the working group about the effect of mandatory reporting and how it is received by the capital market.