Biography
Sehoon Kim is an assistant professor of finance in the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate Department. Sehoon conducts research broadly in the areas of corporate finance and financial markets, focusing on issues related to corporate governance, sustainability, competition, and the impact of policies and regulations on corporations.
Areas of Expertise (6)
Competition
Corporate Finance
Corporate Governance
Financial Markets
Public Policy
Sustainability
Media Appearances (3)
Companies are buying up cheap carbon offsets − data suggest it’s more about greenwashing than helping the climate
The Conversation online
2024-11-11
Carbon offsets have become big business as more companies make promises to protect the climate but can’t meet the goals on their own.
Business school sustainability research: What is read most?
Financial Times online
2023-07-05
Research papers on ESG themes — positive and sceptical — dominate recent downloads from the Social Science Research Network website. In the most widely read research into sustainability from business school academics, three letters dominate: ESG.
Investors are all for ESG. Except, that is, when times are tough.
The Wall Street Journal print
2023-02-04
Individual-investor demand for socially responsible investing “is highly sensitive to income shocks” and economic stress, concluded the study’s authors, Robin Döttling, an assistant professor of finance in the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and Sehoon Kim, assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.
Articles (3)
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Role of Corporate Board of Directors in Public Charity Lobbying
Management ScienceAhn, et al.
2025-02-01
We show that public charities with corporate directors on their boards are more likely to lobby on behalf of connected corporate interests. We document this result using granular fixed effects and alternative measures, excluding donor firms, focusing on specific legislation bills, and shocks to board connections. The effects of connections are stronger when firms face more competition, have better corporate governance, and are more exposed to political risks.
Sustainability Preferences Under Stress: Evidence from COVID-19
Journal of Financial and Quantitative AnalysisDottling and Kim
2024-03-01
We document fragile demand for socially responsible investments (SRIs) by retail mutual fund investors. Using COVID-19 as an economic shock, we show funds with higher sustainability ratings experienced sharper declines in retail flows during the pandemic, controlling for fund characteristics. The decline in retail SRI fund flows is sharper than that of institutional flows, more pronounced when economies are hit harder by COVID-19, and unlikely to be driven by fund performance, past flows and size, or shifting investor attention.
Real effects of climate policy: Financial constraints and spillovers
Journal of Financial EconomicsBartram, et al.
2022-02-01
We document that localized policies aimed at mitigating climate risk can have unintended consequences due to regulatory arbitrage by firms. Using a difference-in-differences framework to study the impact of the California cap-and-trade program with U.S. plant-level data, we show that financially constrained firms shift emissions and output from California to other states where they have similar plants that are underutilized.
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