PurposeThis study aims to examine how the academic literature on climate-related financial risk disclosures, arising from the physical impacts of climate change and the transition to a low-carbon economy, has evolved following the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and assess the extent to which this literature engages with core accounting constructs. It also aims to identify sources of conceptual fragmentation and to inform future accounting research on climate-related disclosures.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a systematic review of 108 academic articles published between 2010 and 2025, supplemented by the TCFD recommendations. Using qualitative thematic analysis, the review classifies studies into five research domains and examines their theoretical foundations under evolving regulatory frameworks, including IFRS S2 and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards.FindingsThe literature clusters into five domains: reporting and disclosure; risk and resilience; TCFD implementation; financial implications of climate-related reporting; and quantification of climate risk. Even with rapid growth, the literature remains fragmented across disciplines, with limited engagement with accounting issues such as materiality determination, assurance, measurement and convergence across reporting regimes. Climate-related disclosures are predominantly analysed as external communication mechanisms rather than as inputs into recognised and audited financial statement items.Originality/valueThis study provides an accounting-centred synthesis of climate-related financial disclosure research by explicitly linking existing work to foundational accounting debates on materiality, assurance, measurement and standard convergence. It extends prior reviews by offering a coherent framework to guide future empirical and conceptual research.

This study examines the impact of carbon pricing on the renewable energy transition using both empirical setting and structural approach. Employing a staggered DID design across 15 European countries between 1990 and 2024, we find that the introduction of a carbon tax is associated with a 2.48% annual rise in the production of renewable energy in the six carbon adopter countries compared to the 9 control countries covered in this study. We further show that the - cap-and-trade systems also contribute to the transition, as countries under emissions trading schemes experience a rise in renewable energy adoption between 2005 and 2024 while an additional rise is observed among carbon tax adopters due to the direct pricing effect of the policy. . Developing a DSGE model and calibrating to the U.S. data, we find that by implementing a one-time and surprise 50% increase in the price of fossil fuels due to either a carbon tax or cap, share of renewable energy sources in the U.S.’s energy mix reaches 35% compared to the 25% at the baseline scenario. However, by implementing a gradual pre-announced carbon pricing policy, starting from a 10% rise in the second year (in the first year the policy is announced) and followed by a 2% annual rise to finally increases fossil fuel prices by 50% over 21 years, the share of renewable energy sources in the country’s energy mix reaches 56% and stays at that level. The result of both empirical and structural approach indicates carbon pricing policy accelerates renewable energy transition.

This study develops a novel methodology to estimate the probability of informed trading around United Nations COP climate meetings. Analyzing data from a sample of 87 U.S.-listed fossil fuel firms between 2006 and 2023, we find that informed trading rises significantly during the [-9, 9] window. This activity generated abnormal returns of 17.565 %, or up to $25.064 billion in profit for informed traders over the relevant period. Our analysis shows that compared to fossil fuel stocks, the change in the probability of informed trading in industrials, healthcare, finance and utilities was relatively flat during COP meetings and the accumulated profit obtained by informed traders in these markets was at most $8.719 billion. Following Adler et al. (2025) who classify COP meetings by positive and negative climate policy shocks, we find that the change in the probability of informed trading around meetings with positive signals is 70.237 %, while it is 62.721 % for meetings with negative signals. We also find that the change in the probability of informed trading around COP21 (at which the Paris Agreement was adopted) was 3.544 times higher than the average across all other COP meetings, while the associated CAR was 2.118 times higher. Given the fossil fuel industry's substantial presence at COP meetings, our findings suggest that these events offer not only policy signals but also informational advantages to select market participants.

This study investigates the information linkages around net zero announcements across countries. Relying on rational expectation theory, this study employs the generalized method of moments (GMM) as well as the implied volatility approach to quantify volatility linkages between exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from nine countries and a global ETF (WLD). The GMM analysis reveals that volatility linkages among country ETFs and WLD range from 39.67 % to 71.43 %, while the implied volatility approach indicates that volatility linkages between markets range from 32.31 % to 65.36 %, indicating significant information spillover across countries. A time-varying dynamic analysis further shows that the US Government's net zero announcement increased volatility linkages across markets by 8.7 % to 58.05 %, signaling market approval of the US commitment to net zero targets. Multivariate analysis of the monthly correlation between country ETFs and WLD shows that the US plays a pivotal role. Although net zero announcements by the US, UK, and China individually impacted market correlations, the effect of China's announcement was insignificant when all announcements were considered in the model. Without US participation, efforts by other countries to achieve global net zero goals are unlikely to succeed.

We examine the relationship between the business cycle, sentiment, and the returns of listed U.S. hedge funds. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, we construct a novel measure of hedge fund sentiment by mapping fund-level sentiment scores to hand-collected portfolio manager commentaries. Our empirical analysis shows that business cycle fluctuations exert the strongest influence on hedge fund sentiment, outweighing the effects of geopolitical, trade, and climate policy risks. Moreover, hedge fund sentiment exhibits explanatory power for the cross-section of returns, where a one-unit improvement in sentiment (from neutral to positive) is associated with an average annual return increase of approximately 0.74 percentage points.

This paper revisits the issue of endogeneity in accounting and finance research by updating the framework initially proposed by Gippel et al. (2015), focusing on recent trends in the use of difference-in-differences (DiD) and natural experiments. We examine new requirements for rigorous endogeneity control, especially the structural estimation methods that extend beyond traditional ordinary least squares (OLS), two-stage least squares (2SLS), instrumental variables (IV), and system GMM (generalized method of moments) approaches. These expanded expectations surrounding DiD assumptions and the need for structural estimation models allow for more robust causal inference and enable researchers to explore hypothetical scenarios. Additionally, we discuss the challenges of announcements with unresolved uncertainty and outline methods to separate news effects from value effects, particularly in cases involving options data. This paper serves as a practical guide for researchers to meet heightened standards in the finance literature and underlines the importance of theoretical modelling and multiple treatments in contemporary causal analysis.

We examine the transmission of international monetary policy shocks via the bank lending channel. Exploiting a panel of regulatory data on foreign banks operating in Australia, we show that the supply of credit is vulnerable to the international pass-through of monetary policy, with banks headquartered in Asia demonstrating high elasticity. Household and non-financial corporate loans are the most susceptible channels to policy shocks, while higher-margin lending, non-lending assets, and reservable liabilities are insensitive. We demonstrate that although banks curtail lending in the face of tighter monetary policy, they increase their non-reservable borrowing, suggesting an increased reliance on capital markets. Finally, we show that unconventional monetary policies have a muted effect compared to traditional measures.

This paper provides a systematic review of the literature pertaining to shareholder activism, divestment, and sustainability. Since the early 2000s, scholars have been engaged in research to better understand shareholder activism and firm divestment. By conducting a state-of-the-art literature review, we identify the 40 most influential publications in the field and find that they can be divided into two distinct themes. We review each of these to identify the main contributions in these research areas. With a highlight on possible pathways for future research, we outline these emerging trends to integrate existing knowledge and provide suggestions for innovative research opportunities to expand the research frontier.

In a recent meta-analysis, most studies on firms’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance were found to have yielded evidence of a positive relationship between superior ESG ratings and financial performance. However, the causal nature of this relationship remains unclear due to endogeneity concerns. Here, we mitigate endogeneity concerns by structuring three natural experiments around significant exogenous shocks to explicitly investigate reverse causality—that is, whether firms with better financial performance have more slack resources available to make subsequent ESG investments. Consistent with slack resources theory, we find that firms with superior financial performance at the time of an exogenous shock subsequently engage more in ESG-related activities. Results are robust to both accounting-based and market-based measures of financial performance across all three exogenous shocks.

Although the subcellular dynamics of RNA and proteins are key determinants of cell homeostasis, their characterization is still challenging. Here we present an integrative framework to simultaneously interrogate the dynamics of the transcriptome and proteome at subcellular resolution by combining two methods: localization of RNA (LoRNA) and a streamlined density-based localization of proteins by isotope tagging (dLOPIT) to map RNA and protein to organelles (nucleus, endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria) and membraneless compartments (cytosol, nucleolus and cytosolic granules). Interrogating all RNA subcellular locations at once enables system-wide quantification of the proportional distribution of RNA. We obtain a cell-wide overview of localization dynamics for 31,839 transcripts and 5,314 proteins during the unfolded protein response, revealing that endoplasmic reticulum-localized transcripts are more efficiently recruited to cytosolic granules than cytosolic RNAs, and that the translation initiation factor eIF3d is key to sustaining cytoskeletal function. Overall, we provide the most comprehensive overview so far of RNA and protein subcellular localization dynamics.

This study investigates the impact of announcements relating to climate change mitigation in the US on the Energy Select Sector ETF (XLE), starting with the US president's net zero emissions announcement on 22 April 2021. We use options market data, in addition to ETF market data, to disaggregate the news effect and value effect of the announcement, finding a positive news effect ($1.65 billion) but a negative value effect (-$2.02 billion). The novel approach proposed by Barraclough et al. (2013) is adopted to identify traders' perceived probability of the achievement of net zero emissions as perceived by investors, finding that investors assigned a 30.9 % probability. Given the difficult journey of the passage of the net zero bill through Congress, we also examine the investors' perceived probability of achievement of later initiatives, as well as their news and value effects. Estimation around the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in Congress on 27 October 2021 shows a positive news effect ($824.61 million) and an almost analogous, negative value effect (-$2.32 billion). The news effect is a result of the signal to the market that reduces policy uncertainty and enables fossil fuel firms to plan with greater certainty the transition to clean energy and the value effect comes from the fact that some reserves may not be able to be extracted and some assets will be stranded. This study finds if the net zero emissions announcement is successfully enacted as legislation, the value of XLE would be 96.90 % of its current value while a failure to become legislation leads to a rise in the value of XLE to reach 106.90 % of its current value.

We extend existing research on political connections to test their role in facilitating or hindering the transition to low‐carbon energy in China. This paper uses hand‐collected evidence on political connections from the résumés of executives and directors of energy firms operating across clean and emissions‐intensive (i.e., fossil‐fuel intensive) sectors in China. To obtain exogenous variation in the transition towards low‐carbon energy sources, we exploit the enactment of China's 2013 Action Plan on Air Pollution Prevention and Control (the Action Plan) as a quasi‐natural experiment. The plan favoured low‐carbon energy sources over traditional energy sources. Using a difference‐in‐differences methodology, we investigate the impact of these political connections on firm performance before and after the country issued the 2013 Action Plan. Our results suggests that low‐carbon energy firms experienced a significant improvement in their operational performance immediately after the implementation of the 2013 Action Plan, with both return on equity (ROE) and return on assets (ROA) significantly higher for politically connected firms than for politically unconnected firms. Financial performance, as measured by Tobin's Q, significantly increased for politically connected low‐carbon energy firms three years after the implementation of the Action Plan, suggesting that political connections have also led to longer‐term financial benefits. Our results provide evidence that, as the transition to low‐carbon energy proceeded, business‐state ties have improved firm performance in sectors targeted by government policy.

Quantification of transfer RNA (tRNA) using illumina sequencing based tRNA-Seq is complicated by their degree of redundancy and extensive modifications. As such, no tRNA-Seq method has become well established, while various approaches have been proposed to quantify tRNAs from sequencing reads. Here, we use realistic tRNA-Seq simulations to benchmark tRNA-Seq quantification approaches, including two novel approaches. We demonstrate that these novel approaches are consistently the most accurate, using data simulated to mimic five different tRNA-Seq methods. This simulation-based benchmarking also identifies specific shortfalls for each quantification approach and suggests that up to 13% of the variance observed between cell lines in real tRNA-Seq data could be due to systematic differences in quantification accuracy.

We examine the transmission of international monetary policy shocks through the bank-lending channel. Exploiting a panel of data on Australian Authorized Deposit-Taking Institutions (ADIs), we show that the supply of credit is vulnerable to an international pass-through of monetary policy by offshore central banks. Contingent on the lending product, commercial banks respond differently to conventional and unconventional monetary policies, with banks headquartered in Asia demonstrating the highest degree of lending elasticity. Household and non-financial corporate loans are the most susceptible channels to policy shocks, while higher-margin lending, non-core assets, and reservable liabilities are insensitive. Unconventional monetary policies have a muted effect compared to traditional measures.