The Purpose of the "Courses" Page

FIN 301 Corporation Finance provides a basic understanding and framework of how firms acquire, allocate, and control their financial resources. The course covers the acquisition and management of corporate capital, analysis of operations, forecasting capital requirements, raising capital, and planning profits.

Sustainable finance questions to consider:

• How can we forecast profits, costs, etc., of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices in our business?
• How do ESG practices affect weighted average cost of capital (WACC)?
• Does ESG-conscious investing undermine portfolio returns?
• How are companies rated on ESG standards? What indices and benchmarks are used to evaluate companies?
• Why are institutional investors increasingly being pushed to enter the ESG domain?
• How does diversity and board composition affect ESG ratings?
• What is the difference between positive and negative screening?

FIN 305W Financial Management of the Business Enterprise covers the development of advanced practices of financial management and their application to decision making in a business firm.

Sustainable finance questions to consider:

• How does ESG apply to other asset classes beyond just equities?
• How is climate risk priced into investors’ portfolios?
• Is obtaining an ESG rating costly for a company? What types of expenses do companies incur as part of achieving their sustainability goals?
• Ravi Bansal, Di Wu, and Amir Yaron, authored the September 2019 study, “Is Socially Responsible Investing A Luxury Good?” They concluded that green stocks outperform brown stocks in good times but underperform in bad times. They argued that “green stocks are similar to luxury goods in that they are in higher demand when the economy does well and thus financial concerns matter less.”
  • • Should a stock that pays off when the economy is doing well but drops in value when the economy is doing poorly have a high expected return over the long run?
    • Would this stock have a capital asset pricing model (CAPM) beta that is greater than or less than one, holding everything else equal?
    • Should a passive investor who owns the ‘market’ include this type of stock in their portfolio? Why or why not?

FIN 406 Security Analysis and Portfolio Management provides an explanation of advanced valuation theory, fundamentals of security analysis, and portfolio construction and management.

Sustainable finance questions to consider:

• Is ESG investing applicable to every investor category (e.g., pension, hedge fund, private equity, etc.)? Are investors with higher risk profiles more or less likely to incorporate ESG strategies?
• How can ESG concepts be applied to derivative securities and products?
• How do costs differ between ESG products and traditional benchmark funds?
• Will ESG become a part of factor investing strategies? How can ESG be combined with other existing factors such as value, growth, or momentum?
• Go to the exchange-traded fund (ETF) screener and database: etf.com/etfanalytics/etf-finder. In the search box, enter a few ETFs that you know, or are interested in, and then click on the ESG tab to pull up various Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) ESG Fund Metrics. Find out more about the 7 different metrics (sustainability-related metrics are to the far right) and see how the ETFs you selected compare on these metrics.

FIN 408 Financial Markets and Institutions covers functional analysis of major credit institutions, sources, and uses of funds, and impact of government regulation.

Sustainable finance questions to consider:

• Does a for-profit company’s social philanthropy arm help facilitate its ESG rating?
• What is the impact of ESG on activist investing and ownership? How successful have active shareholders been in influencing corporate decision-making around energy use and sustainability?
• Do ESG-rated companies possess higher credit ratings, and are they considered less risky than their non-ESG counterparts?
• How should we measure the extent of a corporation’s ESG activities?