Yrjo Koskinen

Dr. Yrjo Koskinen

Positions

Professor

Haskayne School of Business, Finance [FNCE]

BMO Professorship in Sustainable Finance

Haskayne School of Business, Finance [FNCE]

Contact information

Phone number

Office: 403.220.5540

Location

Office: SH150

For media enquiries, contact

Lauren Steeves
Senior Marketing and Communications Strategist

Phone: (403) 220-6153
Email: lauren.steeves@ucalgary.ca

 

Background

Educational Background

Doctor of Philosophy Finance, INSEAD, 1999

Masters of Social Sciences Economics, University of Helsinki, 1991

Biography

Yrjö Koskinen the BMO Professor of Sustainable and Transition Finance at the Haskayne School of Business. He served as the Associate Dean of Research and Business Impact from 2017 to 2022. He has previously been a faculty member at Stockholm School of Economics, Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He holds an MSc degree in Economics from the University of Helsinki, and a PhD in Management (Finance) from INSEAD. Prior to his academic career,  Yrjö worked as a financial journalist, asset manager and as an economist at the Bank of Finland.

Yrjö currently serves on the advisory board of the Institute of Sustainable Finance at Queen’s University and on the steering committee for the Canadian Sustainable Finance Network. He is also a fellow at the Nordic Initiative in Corporate Economics and a research member at the European Corporate Governance Institute. He is the past co-president of the Northern Finance Association.

Yrjö’s main research areas are corporate finance and governance, and sustainable finance. His current research focuses on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and how they affect trading and prices in financial markets. His research has been published in the leading finance and management journals, such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Review of Finance. He is the recipient of the Standard Life Investments Finance Prize for his research on corporate social responsibility and firm risk.

Research

Areas of Research

Sustainable Finance, Corporate Governance, ESG

Participation in university strategic initiatives

Courses

Course number Course title Semester
FNCE 668 Seminar in Sustainable Finance Spring 2024

Projects

Mutual Fund Trading, Greenwashing, and ESG Clientele

This paper studies trading by equity mutual funds comparing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds with conventional funds, using the COVID19 market crash as a quasi-natural experiment to test funds’ commitment to ESG strategies. Funds that disclosed their ESG orientation in their prospectuses increased their portfolioweight of non-ES stocks. In contrast, funds with High Globe ratings or Low Carbon designation from Morningstar maintained a stable portfolio weight in ES stocks in response to fund flows during the crash. Results are consistent with ESG prospectus funds engaging in greenwashing. There is no evidence of widespread greenwashing by the other ESG funds.


Does Limited Liability Matter? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment

We use the enactment of limited liability legislation across Canadian provinces to examine the effect of the change in liability status on firm outcomes for a group of public firms known as income trusts. We show that the switch from unlimited to limited liability increases trusts’ institutional ownership, net external financing, investments, profitability, payouts, and riskiness. Our results are stronger for energy trusts, which are more capital-intensive and face potentially greater liability risks. 


Stakeholder Orientation, Environmental Performance and Financial Benefits

In this paper, we examine the impact of stakeholder orientation on environmental performance and financial benefits from environmental performance. We use firm-level data from Canada and the United States spanning the years 2002 to 2020 and classify all Canadian firms and those U.S. firms located in states that have passed constituency statutes as stakeholder-oriented. We first show that Canadian firms and stakeholder-oriented U.S. firms have better environmental performance than shareholder-oriented U.S. firms. We then find that good environmental performance increases profits and valuations for all firms in the U.S., but especially for shareholder-oriented firms. For Canadian firms overall there is no consistent financial impact. Moreover, the financial impact of environmental performance becomes negative for Canadian firms after the Supreme Court decision in 2008 on BCE Inc. vs. 1976 Debentureholders, stating that the duty of the board of directors is to act in the best interest of the corporation, not its shareholders. The U.S. results for valuations are robust after taking into account potential endogeneity issues using instrumental variables and dynamic panel regressions. Thus, our results suggest a trade-off between firm environmental and financial performance under different governance schemes. On the one hand, stakeholder orientation decreases financial benefits from firms’ environmental performance. On the other hand, shareholder orientation may be detrimental to the environment. This has important policy implications for the current debate on climate change mitigation.

Awards

  • Finnish Securities Markets Foundation research award, Finnish Securities Markets Foundation. 2020
  • Dean's Research Scholar, Haskayne School of Business. 2019
  • The Standard Life Investments Finance Prize, European Corporate Governance Institute. 2014
  • Best paper award, Geneva Summit on Sustainable Finance, University of Geneva. 2013
  • Professor of the Year, Questrom School of Business, Boston University. 2011
  • Broderick Award for Excellence in Research, Questrom School of Business, Boston University. 2007
  • Best paper award, Financial Management Association. 2001
  • Best Paper Award, Portuguese Finance Network Conference. 2023

Publications

In the News