Financial Times award for climate research led by Edinburgh Business School economist
Climate change research led by an economist at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh Business School has won a major award from the Financial Times newspaper.
The body of research, which studied the impact of climate change and nature loss on the creditworthiness of more than 100 nations, was one of five winners of the FT’s Academic research with impact accolade. This is part of the newspaper’s Responsible Business Education awards and recognises research that delivers tangible societal and scientific contributions.
Dr Patrycja Klusak, an expert in credit ratings agencies and Professor of Accounting and Finance at Edinburgh Business School, led the research with colleagues at institutions including the Bennett Institute for Innovation and Policy Acceleration at the University of Sussex Business School; University of Sheffield Management School, Cambridge Judge Business School and SOAS Department of Economics.
We worked hard to show that financial markets need credible, digestible information on how climate change translates into material risks.Dr Patrycja Klusak
Professor of Accounting and Finance at Edinburgh Business School
Dr Klusak said: “I’m thrilled that our research has been recognised with this award from such a prestigious media outlet. We worked hard to show that financial markets need credible, digestible information on how climate change translates into material risks. By simulating the effect of climate change on how the financial health of countries is rated, we created the world’s first climate-adjusted sovereign credit rating.”
Sovereign credit ratings are assessments of a country’s ability to repay its debt and are used by investors to gauge the risk of investing in a country. The research showed that, without a reduction in emissions, 63 nations could expect a drop in their creditworthiness rating in the next decade.
As evidence of impact, the FT said the framework Klusak and her team developed was used to inform internal models for stress testing and loan provisioning at Standard Chartered Bank, a London-based international bank operating in 53 markets across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.
The research is “helping to change how climate risks are factored into global finance,” the FT said.
“Using artificial intelligence to merge climate models with financial data, her team has uncovered how environmental changes influence corporate and public borrowing costs, plus credit ratings and default risks, for more than 100 countries,” FT writer Seb Murray added.
“These insights are significant. Sovereign debt — the money governments borrow — is one of the world’s largest asset classes, valued at about $100tn. Yet, as the professor points out, a gap exists: the financial sector often overlooks climate science, while scientists fail to present their findings in ways investors can use. Her team’s work bridges this divide, integrating climate risk into financial frameworks.”
The research, entitled Rising Temperatures, Falling Ratings: The Effect of Climate Change on Sovereign Creditworthiness, was published in the journal, Management Science, and received widespread media coverage, with more than 350 pieces of coverage across 40 countries.
Dr Klusak’s co-authors were Professor Matthew Agarwala from the Bennett Institute for Innovation & Policy Acceleration, University of Sussex, and Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge; Dr Matt Burke from Sheffield Business School; Dr Kamiar Mohaddes from Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge; Professor Uli Volz from the Centre for Sustainable Finance at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS UK); Dr Moritz Kraemer, a chief economist at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg in Germany and Claudia Lucciola, a fixed income specialist at financial news provider Bloomberg.
The other four winning research papers in the FT’s Academic research with impact awards covered topics including the role of supply chain management in decarbonisation; differences in how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings are applied; how computer algorithms are changing the workplace and the importance of specialist medical devices for newborn babies being available in low and middle-income countries.
