January 22, 2020 Jacob Bradt and Carolyn Kousky This is part II of a two-part series. Out of all natural disasters in the United States, floods are responsible for the most damage. To ensure sufficient funding for repair and rebuilding post-flood, households need flood insurance. At the beginning of last…Read More
ESG Initiative News
Flood Insurance in the US: Lessons from FEMA’s Recent Data Release (Part I)
January 14, 2020 Jacob Bradt and Carolyn Kousky This is part I of a two-part series. Out of all natural disasters in the United States, floods are responsible for the most damage. To ensure sufficient funding for repair and rebuilding post-flood, households need flood insurance. While there is a small,…Read More
Climate-Related Muni Bond Risk: A Q&A with Breckinridge Capital Advisors
January 8, 2020 Erin St. Peter There is increasing apprehension about the potential impacts of climate change on municipal bond markets. As highlighted in a recent Barron’s article, BlackRock cautions that within ten years, 15% of the S&P National Municipal Bonds Index will come from cities and towns estimated to…Read More
Characteristics of Resilient Cities and the Positive Impacts of Building Codes
November 26, 2019 Kevin M. Simmons and Jeffrey Czajkowski Hurricanes and tornadoes are newsworthy because these storms have the potential to disrupt communities with casualties and high economic losses. Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that natural disasters have caused more than $1.7 trillion in losses…Read More
How Companies Like the NBA Could Benefit From ‘Corporate Diplomacy’
(Outlet: Penn Today) – In a Q&A, Wharton Professor of Management Witold Henisz explains what went wrong with the NBA and Activision-Blizzard as they’ve found themselves mired in controversy over recent stances on China.…Read More
Financial Times Highlights Wharton Social Impact Research and Programs in a Special Report
The ESG Initiative at the Wharton School News Financial Times Highlights Wharton Social Impact Research and Programs in a Special Report The Financial Times featured Wharton and the Wharton Social Impact Initiative (WSII) in an October 20th article about business schools shaping the future of social impact. The article prominently…Read More
Hack-for-Resilience at PennApps XX
September 18, 2019 This September, the University of Pennsylvania hosted PennApps XX – the 20th iteration of the nation’s very first college hackathon. More than 1,000 students made their way to Penn’s Engineering Campus for the weekend to develop innovative technology-based solutions to real-world problems. This year, the Wharton Risk…Read More
Rewarding Communities that Build for the Future: A Resilience Policy Score
Rewarding Communities that Build for the Future: A Resilience Policy Score August 19, 2019 The costs of weather-related disasters have been growing in recent years. Over the past decade, the United States has spent over $200 billion in off-budget supplemental legislation to fund recovery from disasters such as hurricanes, storms,…Read More
Why You Deed a Strategic Approach to Political Risk
Political risk is not new, but its context today is different and the risks more sustained and pervasive. The complexity of the geopolitical environment (what we call the ‘transformative age’ in geopolitics), challenges to globalization, and shifting “rules of the game” around global economic integration and expansion present significant systemic risks that are challenging for global companies to navigate.…Read More
Incentivizing Local Governments to Manage Disaster Risk More Effectively
August 12, 2019 Brett Lingle Given the decades-long trend in rising disaster costs and the increasing number of high-cost events, policymakers are increasingly looking for ways to reduce the financial impact on taxpayers. This is especially critical as climate change alters the frequency and severity of extreme events and as…Read More