Sehoon Kim 
Assistant Professor | University of Florida
Gainesville, FL, UNITED STATES
Sehoon Kim researches corporate finance and financial markets.
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)
Investors are all for ESG. Except, that is, when times are tough.
The Wall Street Journal print
2023-02-04
That, a recently published academic study finds, was the response of individual investors in ESG funds when the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns blindsided financial markets in early 2020. 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.
Sourcing sustainability: the maturation of ESG lending
Financier Worldwide online
2022-12-01
Across the length and breadth of the finance and investment landscape, environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues are increasingly making their presence known – potentially influencing every facet of an organisation’s sustainability posture. In the realm of loan issuance, sustainability-linked loans (SLLs) have certainly become a hot topic in recent years, a shift that has led to the emergence of ESG lending as one of the fastest-growing areas of the sustainable investing market.
Sustainability-linked loans: A strong ESG commitment or a vehicle for greenwashing?
Principles for Responsible Investment online
2022-07-20
Financing agreements between investors and firms are increasingly taking environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns into account, reflecting a growing demand from financial stakeholders and broader society that they do so. Despite bank loans being the primary source of debt financing for firms around the world, little is known about their role in the rapidly evolving ESG-contingent financing space.
Articles (3)
Sustainability Preferences Under Stress: Evidence from COVID-19
Journal of Financial and Quantitative AnalysisRobin Döttling, et. al
2022-11-17
We document fragile demand for socially responsible investments (SRI) 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.
ESG Lending
SSRNSehoon Kim, et. al
2022-03-28
This paper examines the environmental, social and governance (ESG) loan market, which has grown from $6 billion in 2016 to $322 billion in 2021. This growth is driven primarily by ESG-linked loans where loan spreads are contingent on borrower ESG performance, as well as by use-of-proceeds based green loans issued for specific green projects. ESG-linked loans are mostly issued by large and publicly traded firms with superior ESG profiles.
Real effects of climate policy: Financial constraints and spillovers
Journal of Financial EconomicsSöhnke M. Bartram, et.al
2022-01-12
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. By contrast, unconstrained firms do not make such adjustments.
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