Sustainability: Accounting and Reporting and Impact Investing

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course unfolds in two interrelated parts: sustainability accounting and reporting and impact investing. Sustainability accounting and reporting is an emerging field of accounting that provides a framework for developing corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance metrics, assessing their reliability, reporting to external stakeholders, evaluating and compensating managers and executives, and assisting managers in strategic and operational decisions that affect environmental costs and risks. The first half of the course provides a comprehensive overview of existing multidisciplinary knowledge and current practices in standard-setting and corporate sustainability accounting and reporting frameworks, for both mandatory (e.g., SEC and EPA filings) and voluntary disclosures (e.g., free-standing sustainability or integrated reports). Impact Investing is a discipline which seeks to generate social benefits as well as financial returns. Learn how capital markets and investment strategies can deliver societal and environmental impact and generate market returns. From boutique beginnings, impact investing has surged into the mainstream of global money management, capital markets and philanthropy now affecting trillions of dollars of assets under management. The greatest demand is for strategies and products that promote social good while having expected returns competitive with non-impact options. Impact investing also permeates the agendas of policymakers, wealthy and public-spirited individuals, academia, philanthropic foundations and institution asset owners. This part of the course provides a conceptual understanding of impact investing and how it manifests in real-world settings. Toward that end, not only will we review a number of dominant "classical" models in investments across asset classes, but we will also examine and analyze how impact investing exists (or does not exist) within those contexts and how proponents and critics have responded. This course will focus on the real world via case studies, live examples, and guest speakers. Students will organize into groups to discover, research, analyze and present team research projects, some or all of which may be published.