As its workforce ages and major economies shift towards producing higher value-added goods and services, New Zealand will face increasing challenges to remain globally competitive and maintain high living standards. Future growth will need to come increasingly from productivity gains, and...

The research project WWWforEurope undertakes to lie the theoretical and empirical foundations for the embarkment on a new socio-ecological growth path in Europe. The new path underlines the need to guarantee Welfare as a broad universal principle for its population, assuring economic and social...

The report summarizes first-year research of a three-year study of pathways to urban sustainability. The research team selected the STAR Communities assessment model as the backbone for its analysis. This framework offers a menu-based system for enabling city managers and leaders to build paths...

Environmental disasters are thought to increase the focus on corporate sustainability in the communities where they occur. Extracting data on wildfires (a frequent type of disaster in the U.S.) and using ESG ratings and EPA air enforcement actions to construct measures of local corporate...

What is the impact of environmental consciousness (i.e., being green) as borrower and as lender on loan rates? We investigate this question employing an international sample of syndicated loans over the period 2011-2019. We find that green firms borrow at a signifi- cantly lower spread,...

This policy brief argues in favor of a new urban model that harnesses the power that cities have to curb global warming. Such a model tackles fundamental management challenges in the energy, building and transport sectors to promote the growth of diverse and compact cities. Such a model is...

This report estimates the CO2 emissions of freight transport on a hypothetical high-speed rail (HSR) line along the northern route, from Lyon to Warsaw, of a 'European Silk Road' (ESR). Using a methodology consisting of predictions regarding the freight-carrying capacity of the future HSR, and...

We investigate whether and how the environmental consciousness (greenness for short) of firms and banks is reflected in the pricing of bank credit. Using a large international sample of syndicated loans over the period 2011-2019, we find that green banks indeed reward firms for being green in...

While the global economy continues to grow, ecosystem services tend to stagnate or decline. Economic theory has shown how such shifts in relative scarcities can be reflected in project appraisal and environmental-economic accounting, but empirical evidence has been sparse to put theory into...