The Carbon Problem

Date: Thursday 4th December 2025 Time: 18:30-19:35 GMT
Venue: Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building, LSE (map)
Speaker: Lubos Pastor (University of Chicago Booth School of Business)
Chair: Amil Dasgupta (LSE Finance and Financial Markets Group)

This is the third lecture in the Sir Oliver Hart Lecture Series

The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continues to rise. How large are the economic costs of carbon emissions, and how can humanity reduce them? This lecture will examine the role of sustainable finance in addressing these challenges, with particular attention to its various forms and implications for investors.

Lubos Pastor is Charles P. McQuaid Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He also serves as president of the European Finance Association and board member of the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance. Outside academia, he serves on the board of directors of Vanguard, the advisory board of the Andersen Institute for Finance & Economics, and the CRSP Index Advisory Council. He has served as president of the Western Finance Association, director of the American Finance Association, director of the Center for Research in Security Prices, board member of the National Bank of Slovakia, and associate editor of the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies.

Professor Pastor’s research focuses mostly on financial markets and investment management. His articles have appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Financial Studies, and other outlets. His research has been awarded four Fama/DFA Prizes, two Smith Breeden Prizes, AQR Insight Award, Barclays Global Investors Prize, BlackRock Research Award, Goldman Sachs Asset Management Prize, Moskowitz Prize, NASDAQ Award, QMA Award, Q Group Award, and the Ross Prize. He has been teaching at Chicago Booth since 1999 when he obtained a Ph.D. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Amil Dasgupta has been Professor of Finance at LSE since 2016. He is Director of the Financial Markets Group and Academic Director of the Sustainable Finance Initiative within the Global School of Sustainability. He has a distinguished research track record in the areas of financial markets, institutional investors, and corporate governance and regularly publishes in top academic journals. He is a Research Member at the European Corporate Governance Institute, research advisor to the Reserve Bank of India, and academic visitor to the Bank of England.

The Sir Oliver Hart Lecture Series and the associated Conference Series were set up in 2023 to honour the distinguished British-American economist and Nobel Laureate, Professor Sir Oliver Hart. The themes of the lectures and conferences aim to have policy relevance and connections to Professor Sir Oliver Hart’s own pioneering research. The series currently focuses on the area of sustainable corporate governance, i.e., on studying the role of companies in the economy and society, whether companies should focus solely on profits or attempt to reflect the non-financial preferences of their shareholders, and how such preferences can be reflected in corporate governance.