Research

Working Papers

• Procuring Sustainability: The Impact of Green Government Contracts

Job Market Paper

This paper examines the impact of integrating sustainability criteria in federal procurement on firm behavior and environmental performance. Using comprehensive U.S. government contract and firm-level emissions data, I find that firms awarded green contracts significantly reduce their GHG emission intensity, though these reductions are not consistently greater than those from standard contracts. Despite the higher costs of green contracts, the evidence suggests that their environmental benefits may not always justify the cost premium. The effect on emissions is more pronounced for firms that are brown and financially constrained. I address endogeneity and selection biases by applying a matching technique, a Bartik instrument and exploiting an exogenous increase in public spending following census revisions. Green procurement also fosters innovation, particularly in green technologies, and generates positive but largely unilateral spillover effects in supply chains. Overall, these findings indicate that while government procurement can promote sustainability, the environmental benefits of green contracts may not justify their higher costs.

• Socially Responsible Investing and Multinationals’ Pollution: Evidence from Global Remote Sensing Data

(With Virginia Gianinazzi, Victoire Girard and Melissa Prado)

This paper investigates the impact of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) capital on the polluting practices of industrial Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) across all their facilities. We leverage the inverse relation between local pollution and high-frequency satellite-based measurements of local vegetation health through the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Our empirical analysis encompasses a comprehensive dataset of 911 parent companies and 52,806 establishments worldwide. We estimate how the within-cell panel variation in NDVI relates to changes in SRI ownership and document an overall positive association between SRI ownership of a company and the NDVI around the company's establishments. However, this improvement is limited to facilities located within OECD countries. We observe no improvement between SRI and NDVI in non-OECD countries.  These heterogeneous findings underscore the importance of considering the global nature of MNEs when evaluating sustainability effort.

• Disaster as Catalyst: How Natural Disasters Shape Fund Managers' ESG Commitment

This paper investigates how exposure to natural disasters shapes mutual fund managers’ ESG commitments. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that managers in counties adjacent to disaster areas increase portfolio ESG scores by 1.5% (3% for environmental scores) in subsequent quarters. These effects are driven by divestment from low-ESG stocks rather than acquisitions of high-ESG assets. Social connectedness to affected areas, prior climate change beliefs, and media attention amplify the response. Robustness tests rule out performance-driven or divestment explanations. By linking salience theory to sustainable investing, this study reveals how personal and social experiences reshape capital allocation.

• (Only) Diversity Matters: Foreign Investors and Firms' Accountability Arbitrage

In this paper, I examine the impact of foreign institutional ownership (FIO) on firms’ social policies using a global panel of 12,351 firms across 58 countries. I find that FIO boosts diversity but undermines worker safety, customer responsibility, and human-rights practices. This is driven by a "visibility gap" where investors prioritize easily measurable social metrics over less transparent ones. This negative relationship intensifies when investors are distracted and is mitigated in countries with a strong rule of law. I also show that long-term foreign ownership can enhance certain social policies, unlike short-term ownership, which consistently detracts from them. To establish a causal link, I employ two instruments: capital proximity and MSCI index inclusion. Overall, the results highlight the nuanced role of foreign institutional capital in shaping the social dimension of ESG, which remains an under-researched area.