Research at the House for Sustainable Governance and Markets
Building on and supported by the FDEF’s three departments, the House lends its strength to interdisciplinary research, teaching and outreach, as a platform that allows for greater visibility of the FDEF’s sustainability research and contact point for interest from public and private institutions.
Our researchers focus on the following research areas:
-
About
Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. Business activities can have positive and negative impacts on a full spectrum of human rights. Business and human rights research investigates, from an interdisciplinary perspective, how positive impacts can be enhanced and how negative impacts can be mitigated by analysing corporate best practices as well as political, legislative and regulatory developments on the domestic and international levels.
-
Coordinators and Researchers
- Denise Elaine Fletcher
- Basak Baglayan
- Jörg Gerkrath
-
About
Development economics focuses on improving economic, social and fiscal conditions in emerging and developing economies (EMDCs), considering factors such as health, education, working conditions, domestic and international policies, and market conditions. The research focus lies on improving the aforesaid conditions from a sustainability perspective with a view to furthering long-term change. Given that by far the majority of the world’s population resides in EMDCs, the importance for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals needs no further explanation.
-
Coordinators and Researchers
-
About
Financial inclusion is a key component of a sustainable finance framework. Financial inclusion research focuses on the individuals’ and (small and medium) businesses’ access to useful and affordable financial products and services that meet their needs – transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance – delivered in a responsible and sustainable way. Financial inclusion is a significant step toward hedging the risks of life (health, unemployment, age, accidents and disaster) through financial products. In turn, humans can pursue a long-term perspective crucial to engage in sustainable conduct – since where short-termism determines the daily thinking, unsustainable conduct like overconsumption of daily resources will follow suit.
-
Coordinator and Researcher
-
About
Climate change is costly to society: Business models must be adapted, new innovations developed and implemented, old profit opportunities must be foregone. All these changes must be financed, and this is all the more challenging the more the overall economy needs to deal with an economic crisis. The best way to finance the fight against climate change is employing the distributive and risk sharing features of financial markets. This research focus analyses market-based opportunities and enablers to finance a change towards a more sustainable future.
-
Coordinator and Researcher
-
About
The European Green Deal is the EU’s plan to make Europe’s economy sustainable. To achieve its climate objectives, the EU attempts to decarbonize its energy sector and fully integrate and digitalize its energy markets. The energy company of the future must coordinate a huge number of connected, distributed green energy assets (e.g., hydropower, photovoltaics, windpower, hydrogen storage, electric vehicles, demand response) and simultaneously coordinate its trading activities across multiple energy markets. This research area focuses on the development of mathematical models and algorithms to address this challenge.
-
Coordinator
Nils Löhndorf
-
Researchers
- Nils Löhndorf
- Benteng Zou
- Luisito Bertinelli
-
About
Flows of goods and services are at the core of how economic prosperity is created. Current practices, however, bear adverse impact on the environment. Supply chain decisions—such as sourcing, location and network design, inventory, and information sharing—can dramatically influence our environmental footprint. Proper interventions can lead to corrective actions and change of behaviour. Accordingly, greening supply chains requires firms to develop a more integrative approach to the design of their supply chains, interactions with their suppliers and customers, while considering the rapidly changing business environment. This can be coupled with sets of incentives that will ultimately induce decision makers to reshape their behaviours and decisions and ideally result with more sustainable practices.
-
Coordinator
-
Researchers
- Anne Lange
- Benny Mantin
-
About
Environmental costs, as stereotypical externality, tend to be disregarded when calculating the financial results of an enterprise. As an important step towards a sustainable economy, green accounting seeks to include environmental factors into the financial results of operations, in an effort to help businesses and stakeholders understand and manage the conflict between traditional economics goals and environmental goals. Yet, the method itself requires careful analysis to avoid misallocation of funds. Further, insights into green accounting could guide rule-making as to future accounting rules. These objectives are pursued by the Green accounting research focus.
-
Coordinator and Researcher
-
About
In development cooperation, strengthening the rule of law is crucial to further civil society’s long-term well-being and balance the freedom and justice objective with economic progress. Relying on two long-term development projects with Mali and Laos, and closely related to Luxembourg’s development policy, this research focus works on developing and implementing constitutional principles. The research deals with the genesis of a normative, constitutional order – an innovative research approach that is indispensable for the democracies in the context of geopolitical challenges.
-
Coordinator and Researcher
-
About
This research focus deals with systems, structures and procedures in decision-making in the European Union and Luxembourg. This field of study addresses how to define the future of regulatory structures, decision-making procedures and modes of action in Europe’s multi-level structures. How to ensure open, transparent, inclusive societies capable of addressing challenges of innovation, transformation and digitalisation? How to govern in times of climate change induced disruptions, migratory movements? How to ensure that financial markets are open, well-regulated and delivering for society? How to streamline the legal framework of society to serve the basic constitutional value sets including individual fundamental rights?
-
Coordinator
-
Researchers
- Alessandra Donati
- Herwig Hofmann
-
About
Sustainable finance refers to the process of taking environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations into account when making financial decisions, with an aim to increase sustainable economic activities and projects, on both the level of the firm (“corporate sustainability”) and the level of financial intermediaries such as asset and fund managements, investment firms and pensions funds that channel investments to the firms.
Environmental considerations refer to climate change mitigation, the preservation of biodiversity, pollution prevention and circular economy. Social considerations include issues of inequality, inclusiveness, labour relations, investment in human capital and communities, as well as human rights. The governance of public and private institutions, including management structures, employee relations and executive remuneration, plays a fundamental role in ensuring the inclusion of social and environmental considerations in the decision-making process.
Sustainable finance as research focus is pursued from both a finance and legal perspective. While the first focuses on utilizing economic factors, the second focuses on legal and regulatory tools, including the European Commission’s Sustainable Finance Action Plan and its implementation for financial and corporate actors in Luxembourg, Europe and beyond.
-
Coordinators and Researchers
Research projects
Some of our projects
The ADA Chair in Financial Law (inclusive finance) sponsored by ADA and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs provides cutting edge research in the emerging field of law and regulation of inclusive finance, with a focus on knowledge transfer from European jurisdictions to developing countries.
In 2019, Luxembourg launched the creation of the Luxembourg Sustainable Finance Roadmap, an initiative aimed at developing a sustainable finance ecosystem, via its Luxembourg for Finance platform and with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme – Finance Initiative, as well as impact finance specialist Innpact,. Spearheaded by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development, the initiative envisaged close collaboration with the academic community in the form of an academic chair and a research programme.
The Department of Finance of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance proved to be an apt place to host this chair and this research project, as sustainable governance and markets is one of the Faculty’s strategic research programmes. This project in Sustainable Finance will bundle educational and research capabilities with industry expertise and knowledge while benefitting from the support of these two Ministries. The project will focus on activities in three core domains: research, education and exchange.
The projects aims to help bring targeted change to Luxembourg’s financial industry, transforming it into a sector that supports more sustainable and inclusive economic systems by advancing cutting-edge research, developing high-quality teaching and certification programmes, attracting talent and promoting Luxembourg as a leading destination for providers of sustainable finance services.
To support and enhance the procurement activities, knowledge and research in Luxembourg, the Ministry of the Economy is collaborating with the University of Luxembourg to set and establish a Chair in Digital Procurement. The establishment of this Chair in Digital Procurement is an outcome of ongoing engagement between the Luxembourg Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LCL) and the Chief Procurement Officers (CPO) Club, composed of 7 leading companies – Amazon, ArcelorMittal, Delphi, Ferrero, Leaseplan, SES and Vodafone.
The Chair aims to facilitate the creation of a Procurement Excellence Platform (PEP), which will harness the links already established with the members of the CPO Club, the research and knowledge base in supply chain and logistics at the LCL, as well as the introduction of new educational activities focused around digital procurement. The aim of the PEP is to foster the procurement function in organizations while embracing digital innovations, to build educational programmes in procurement, to attract procurement talent to Luxembourg, to advance cutting-edge procurement research, and to champion Luxembourg as the destination of choice in Europe for establishing procurement hubs.
Luxembourg is a major European hub for business, research and innovation, driving growth through digital transformation and innovation in key sectors such as logistics. Procurement is a crystalizing strategic operation. It needs to embrace opportunities arising from the digital revolution. The Luxembourg Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LCL) at the University of Luxembourg’s Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance is the natural place for this platform, as procurement is closely related to the supply chain functions.
The PEP will combine the knowledge and expertise of the CPO Club members together with the learning and research capabilities of the University of Luxembourg and the MIT SCALE Network and the support of the Ministry of the Economy. The PEP will focus on 3 core activities: education, research, exchange. To achieve its goals, a Digital Procurement Chair will be hired to lead the PEP and implement the identified core activities. The Chair will be accompanied by a PhD position and further assistance in accordance with the tasks described below.
Since 2017, the University of Luxembourg, specifically the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance is actively cooperating in the field of legal higher education with the National University of Laos, specifically the Faculty of Law and Political Science (FLP) in the framework of an Inter-University Cooperation project which is an integral part of the Indicative Cooperation Program signed in 2015 between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and Lao People’s Democratic Republic
The cooperation actions with the partner universities in Bamako (University of Legal and Political Sciences, and University of Social Sciences and Management) aim at concrete and targeted support to the development efforts of advanced education and research. These actions broaden and reinforce the first cooperation undertaken by the University of Luxembourg and complement the fields of Luxembourg Cooperation in Mali.
Since 2020, the project Working, Yet Poor (WorkYP) coordinated by the University of Luxembourg is focused on the increasing social trend of working people at risk or below the poverty line. The overall purpose is to effectively prevent the risk of social dumping, reduce economic shocks, and grant EU citizens, mostly those who do not circulate, regaining confidence in public governance and substantiating their citizenry’s status.
Past conferences
Online conference – Luxembourg sustainable finance seminar series
-
31 March 2022, 12.30 – 14.00
-
29 November 2021, 16.00 – 17.30
-
22 April 2021, 12.00 – 14.00
Presentations