Evaluating Green Bonds

This BBL is organized by ENR GP and Environmental Health and Pollution Management GSG

Tuesday, 1 August 2017 | 12:30 – 2:00pm | I 5-040

Join using WebEx:

Meeting password: PMwkH85s

Meeting number: 736 069 261

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Toll: 1-650-479-3207

Access code: 736 069 261

Overview:

Green Bonds (GBs) are defined as capital-raising instruments whose proceeds are exclusively applied towards new and existing Green Projects – defined here as projects and activities with positive benefits for climate and environment. Green Bonds aim to integrate environmental concerns in borrowers’ operations to give ethical as well as mainstream investors access to environment enhancing investment opportunities. Because they are subject to moral hazards stemming from asymmetric information and contract incompleteness, GBs present special needs for ex ante evaluation, transparency and ex post monitoring.

This study addresses some of the main questions related to the credibility of the environmental claims of the issuers, the ethical nature of GBs and their measurable impact on the economy and on the environment. The presentation will summarize some of the elements of the general historical and economic background that has led to the development of Green Bonds, examine their relevance for sovereign issuers, and discuss a methodology for developing a due diligence process to assess their linkage with green policies and their likely impact on the economy.

Chair:

Iain Shuker (Practice Manager, GEN2A)

Discussants:

Raffaello Cervigni (Lead Environmental Economist, AFR1)

Olha Krushelnytska (Operations Officer, GEFPO)

Dan Biller (Sector Manager, MIGEC)

Presenter:

Pasquale L. Scandizzo. Professor. University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.

Pasquale L. Scandizzo holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and is presently Professor of Political Economy, Fellow of the Center for Economic and International Studies, Senior Fellow and Board Member of the Economics Foundation at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. He is also President of the Italian Association of Development Economists and President of Openeconomics, a university spin off focusing on project evaluation and economic development. His former institutional positions include the Chair of the Center for Economic International Studies, the Governing Board of the Italian Institute of Statistics, the Italian Institute for Economic Planning (President), the National Planning Board, the Parliamentary Budget Committee (Senior Adviser), the World Bank (Senior Economist).

Among many topics, his research, whose results have been widely published, concerns the relationship between institutions and economic development, with focus on risk aversion, the distribution of rights and the demand supply nexus in a general equilibrium framework. He has developed methodologies for the economic evaluation of public projects under uncertainty using real option theory and general equilibrium techniques and has been leading their application in both developed and developing countries.