Decarbonization of financial markets: a mean-field game approach

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lavigne, Pierre, Tankov, Peter
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Lavigne, Pierre
Tankov, Peter
author_facet Lavigne, Pierre
Tankov, Peter
contents We develop a financial market model in which a large population of firms chooses dynamic emission strategies under climate transition risk, interacting with both environmentally concerned and neutral investors. Firms face a trade-off between financial returns and environmental performance, while their decisions are coupled through an equilibrium stochastic discount factor determined by investors' portfolio allocations. The framework is formulated as a mean-field game, for which we establish existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium among firms. We propose a convergent numerical scheme to compute the equilibrium and use it to study how climate transition risk and green-minded investors affect decarbonization dynamics and asset prices. Our results show that uncertainty about future climate risks and policies increases aggregate emissions and widens valuation spreads between green and brown firms. Although environmentally concerned investors can partially offset these effects by raising the cost of capital for high-emission firms and incentivizing emission reductions, policy uncertainty weakens their impact. Even a large share of green-minded investors is insufficient to reverse emission growth when future climate policies are unclear, highlighting the crucial role of credible and predictable climate policy in enabling financial markets to support decarbonization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2301_09163
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Decarbonization of financial markets: a mean-field game approach
Lavigne, Pierre
Tankov, Peter
Mathematical Finance
General Economics
Economics
Primary: 91A16, secondary: 91B76, 91G15
We develop a financial market model in which a large population of firms chooses dynamic emission strategies under climate transition risk, interacting with both environmentally concerned and neutral investors. Firms face a trade-off between financial returns and environmental performance, while their decisions are coupled through an equilibrium stochastic discount factor determined by investors' portfolio allocations. The framework is formulated as a mean-field game, for which we establish existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium among firms. We propose a convergent numerical scheme to compute the equilibrium and use it to study how climate transition risk and green-minded investors affect decarbonization dynamics and asset prices. Our results show that uncertainty about future climate risks and policies increases aggregate emissions and widens valuation spreads between green and brown firms. Although environmentally concerned investors can partially offset these effects by raising the cost of capital for high-emission firms and incentivizing emission reductions, policy uncertainty weakens their impact. Even a large share of green-minded investors is insufficient to reverse emission growth when future climate policies are unclear, highlighting the crucial role of credible and predictable climate policy in enabling financial markets to support decarbonization.
title Decarbonization of financial markets: a mean-field game approach
topic Mathematical Finance
General Economics
Economics
Primary: 91A16, secondary: 91B76, 91G15
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.09163