Baruch College and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 3rd Baruch-JFQA Climate Finance and Sustainability Conference.
Building on the success of the past two conferences, we look forward to once again bringing together leading scholars from around the world to present original research and enrich the dialogue on climate finance and sustainability. For this year’s program, we are especially interested in work that explores the intersection of politics and climate finance—whether through political economy, policy uncertainty, or regulatory change—given the central role these forces play in shaping the low-carbon transition. At the same time, we welcome submissions across the full spectrum of climate finance research, including work that explores climate risk, disclosure, and real estate.
We expect to accept 8-12 papers for the final program. The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis will offer authors a dual-submission option, with no additional fee. In addition, papers co-authored by PhD students are eligible for consideration in the PhD poster session, providing an excellent opportunity for emerging scholars to showcase their work.
Submission link (deadline midnight ET, November 18, 2025):
https://sites.google.com/view/baruch-jfqa-climate-finance-an/submission
The papers will be evaluated by members of the program committee, and accepted authors will be notified by mid-January 2026. For any inquiries or further information, please email Baruch.JFQA.CONF@gmail.com.
Ran Duchin holds the Coughlin Family chair in the Seidner Department of Finance at the Boston College Carroll School of Management. He received a Ph.D. in finance and business economics from the University of Southern California in 2008. Duchin's research interests include corporate finance, corporate governance, climate finance, and political economy. His work studies a wide range of investment decisions, including internal capital allocation, acquisitions, and government bailouts. In his work, he investigates various mechanisms and frictions that shape investment policies (and, more broadly, corporate decision-making), ranging from political economy and financial regulation to agency conflicts, climate risk, and human behavior. Duchin has articles published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies, among others. Several of his papers received best paper awards from leading academic conferences and were selected by journal editors as lead articles. According to Google Scholar, his papers received close to 10,000 citations and were cited in top journals of other disciplines, including Accounting, Management, Strategy, and Business Law. His work has also attracted attention from many popular national publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and The Washington Post. Duchin currently serves as Managing Editor of The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. He also served as an Associate Editor at the Review of Financial Studies.
Laura T. Starks, Ph.D., is the George Kozmetsky Centennial Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Finance at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on sustainable finance. Her current research focuses on sustainable finance issues, including climate risk and shareholder proxy voting, as well as investor expectations and financial decisions. She has won many awards for her research and teaching, including the 2022 Skandia Research Award on Long-Term Savings for contributions to the field of banking, insurance and financial services and the 2021 Moskowitz Prize for outstanding research in sustainable finance, which is the premier global prize for research in sustainable finance. She is Research Associate of the NBER, Fellow at the AFA, ECGI, CEPR, FMA and Senior Fellow for ABFER. She has served in a number of editorial positions including Editor of the Review of Financial Studies. She has been President of the AFA, SFS, WFA and FMA. She has served on mutual funds’ boards of directors, pension fund advisory committees, the Board of Governors of the Investment Company Institute, and advisory committees for the Norwegian Government Pension Fund. She currently serves on advisory boards or committees for AIF Global, FTSE-Russell, Kroner Center for Financial Research, Investment Company Institute, Netspar, and the PRI (Principles of Responsible Investing), where she is also Chair of the Academic Network Advisory Committee.
Conference Co-organizers/Co-Sponsors
Ran Duchin (Coughlin Family Professor, Boston College, Managing Editor, JFQA)
Kai Li (Canada Research Chair in Corporate Governance and W. Maurice Young Endowed Chair in Finance, UBC, Managing Editor, JFQA)
Lin Peng (Krell Chair Professor in Finance, Baruch College)
Dexin Zhou (Associate Professor, Baruch College)
Svenjia Dube (Assistant Professor, Baruch College)
Program Committee
Pat Akey (ESSEC), Elsa Allman (French Central Bank), Ian Appel (UVA Darden), Aymeric Bellon (UNC Chapel Hill), Jie Cao (HK Poly U), Dmitry Chebotarev (Indiana University), Shira Cohen (SDSU), Elroy Dimson (Cambridge), Joey Engelberg (UCSD), Janet Gao (Georgetown), Zhenyu Gao (CUHK), Stefano Giglio (Yale), Daniel G. Garrett (UPenn), Shan Ge (NYU), Umit Gurun (UT Dallas), Matthew Gustafson (Penn State), Ai He (U of South Carolina), Christoph Herpfer (UVA Darden), Shiyang Huang (HKU), Wenxi Jiang (CUHK), Igor Kadach (IESE), Sehoon Kim (U of Florida), Andrei Kirilenko (Cambridge), Ugur Lel (UGA), Doron Levit (U of Washington), Ryan Lewis (CU Boulder), Kai Li (Peking U (HSBC)), Jiasun Li (George Mason), Weikai Li (CityU HK), Hao Liang (Singapore Management University), Lisa Yao Liu (Columbia), Daniele Macciocchi (U of Miami), Pedro Matos (UVA), Roni Michaely (HKU), Adair Morse (UC Berkeley), Philip Mulder (Wisconsin Madison), Dermot Murphy (UIC), Lilian Ng (York University), Sangmin Oh (Columbia), Enrichetta Ravina (Northwestern), Lukas Roth (U of Alberta), Ethan Rouen (Harvard), Hong Ru (MIT), Parinitha Sastry (UPenn), Zacharias Sautner (U of Zurich), Christoph M. Schiller (Ohio State University), Thomas Schmid (HKU), Ishita Sen (Harvard), Sophie Shive (Notre Dame), Nikki Skinner (U of Colorado), Denis Sosyura (Arizona State University), Yuehua Tang (U of Florida), Lucian A. Taylor (UPenn), Nitzan Tzur-Ilan (Dallas Fed), Peter Tufano (Harvard), Yongxiang Wang (SAIF), Jeffrey Wurgler (NYU), Steven Xiao (UT Dallas), Qiping Xu (UIUC), Constantine Yannelis (Cambridge), Ayako Yasuda (UC Davis), Aaron Yoon (Northwestern), Xiaoyun Yu (SAIF), Hong Zhang (Singapore Management University), Shaojun Zhang (Ohio State University), Xin Zheng (UBC), Qifei Zhu (NUS)
Acknowledgement
The conference organizers thank the following for their generous support:
The Zicklin School of Business - A leader in public business education, dedicated to advancing knowledge and preparing students for success in a dynamic global economy.
The Robert A. Schwartz Center for Trading and Financial Markets Research – Dedicated to promoting the inclusion of trading and security market structure in academic curricula.
The Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity – A forum for discussion of a broad range of issues confronting U.S. corporations and capital markets.