Stephano Giglio will present his paper "Biodiversity Risk" at this semi-annual Wharton Climate Center workshop.
Abstract: We explore the effects of physical and regulatory risks related to biodiversity loss on economic activity and asset values. We first develop a news-based measure of aggregate biodiversity risk and analyze how it varies over time. We also construct and publicly release several firm-level measures of exposure to biodiversity risk, based on textual analyses of firms’ 10-K statements, a large survey of financial professionals, regulators, and academics, and the holdings of biodiversity-related funds. Exposures to biodiversity risk vary substantially across industries in a way that is economically sensible and distinct from exposures to climate risk. We find evidence that biodiversity risks already affect equity prices: returns of portfolios that are sorted on our measures of biodiversity risk exposure covary positively with innovations in aggregate biodiversity risk. However, our survey indicates that market participants do not perceive the current pricing of biodiversity risks to be adequate.
Light refreshments will be provided. This workshop is invitation only. If you'd like to attend, please contact us at esg-i@wharton.upenn.edu.