Measuring Corporate Environmental Footprints

Firms are pivotal in the global economy but contribute significantly to environmental and climate challenges. Although some organizations disclose carbon emissions, a minuscule fraction of the millions of firms worldwide report their broader environmental impacts, often resulting in data that lack credibility, consistency, and global coverage. This gap creates significant blind spots for regulators, policymakers, and stakeholders.

Our project aims to fill this void by developing independent, comprehensive, and localized measures of firms’ environmental footprints. We utilize advancements in spatial monitoring, such as satellite-based pollution tracking, and integrate these with global datasets on firm locations and financial information. Employing a flexible Bayesian estimation framework, we establish links between environmental conditions and corporate activities, thereby generating location-specific measures of firms' contributions to environmental issues.

This initiative is bolstered by the high-performance computing resources provided by NHR, which facilitate our big-data analysis and Bayesian estimations. The resulting footprint measures will yield critical insights for firms and regulators keen on formulating effective mitigation policies, ultimately enhancing accountability and driving sustainable practices within the corporate sector.

Researching group: Corporate Footprints Lab