White Paper
September 1, 2026
Popular carbon metrics can make portfolios appear to be decarbonizing even when underlying emissions change little. This paper explains why investors should distinguish between relative carbon exposure and financed emissions when evaluating climate-aware investment strategies.
Working Paper
December 30, 2025
This paper develops a macro-finance model of how transition and physical climate risks are priced in markets. It shows that brown assets can hedge climate risk when carbon taxes are too low, challenging the view that risk-based investing naturally supports climate goals.
Working Paper
October 4, 2025
This paper asks whether sustainable finance can meaningfully mitigate climate change by raising polluters’ costs of capital. While theory implies a strong pricing of emissions, the evidence suggests markets currently price carbon far too weakly to drive a net-zero transition.
White Paper
January 22, 2025
Investors seeking to incorporate sustainability considerations into their commodities portfolios may have a variety of ESG objectives. In many ways, assessing which commodities are sustainable is the easy part. The more difficult part is identifying what investment action in commodities will achieve an ESG goal. This paper explores several types of commodities-related sustainability motivations, and how they may be mapped to consistent investment action.
Journal Article
August 31, 2024
In a wide ranging interview, AQR managing principal Cliff Asness discusses many aspects of AQR’s investment philosophy and approach from the perspective of a CIO – how we adapt our process to changing market conditions, how we think about adding innovative technology such as machine learning to our process, and more.
Working Paper
March 1, 2024
The greenium (the expected return of green securities relative to brown) is a central impact measure for ESG investors. We propose a robust green score combined with forward-looking expected returns, yielding a more precisely estimated annual equity greenium.
Working Paper
March 14, 2023
We show that green finance should not be used if the carbon price equals its social cost. However, with too low carbon prices, green finance can implement the social optimum if the cost of capital can be controlled and there are no stranded assets. We show explicitly how to "translate" a carbon tax into green finance terms, highlight how green finance should depend on scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, present its limitations, and illustrate the predictions empirically.
White Paper
February 6, 2023
To help clarify how investors seeking impact through their financial portfolios can affect the direction of corporate decision making, we analyze the two channels of influence – direct control and changing the cost of capital. We argue that there are no other first-order mechanisms for a financial portfolio to have “impact” beyond these. As a real-world example, we apply these insights to the portfolio “net zero” initiative.
Journal Article
November 8, 2022
To manage climate risks, investors need reliable climate exposure metrics, but such risks may be difficult to measure, particularly along the supply chain. Using broadly accessible data, we propose an intuitive metric that quantifies the exposure a company has to customers and suppliers. Our metric is related to scope 3 emissions and captures the strength of economic linkages as well as the overall climate exposure of a firm’s customers and suppliers.
Working Paper
September 23, 2022
We examine whether capital structure is irrelevant for enterprise value and investment when investors care about ESG issues, which we denote “ESG-Modigliani-Miller” (ESG-MM). Theoretically, we show that ESG-MM holds if ESG is additive and markets are perfect. Empirically, we provide evidence of failure of ESG-MM, implying that firms and governments can exploit non-additive ESG or segmented markets.
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