The Eco-Agency Problem and Sustainable Investment

In times of heightened environmental consciousness and a global call for urgent action, corporations are playing a critical role in addressing pressing environmental challenges. As concerns about climate change, resource depletion, and ecosystem degradation intensify, businesses are under mounting pressure to align their strategies with sustainable practices. Despite that, there is strong evidence of underinvestment in sustainability and environmental efforts by corporations. In this Article, we first define the eco-agency problem—the special conflict of interest between the corporate officers who focus on short-term profitability and the other stakeholders who seek long-term profitability and sustainability—and then discuss existing coping measures, such as green bonds, CoCo bonds, and ESG compensation metrics. To assess the extent of the eco-agency problem, we conducted an experimental study of both professional and nonprofessional investors. According to our findings, both groups exhibit statistically significant preferences for sustainable investments. Revealing the preferences of investors toward sustainability can inspire corporate officers to embrace their role as sustainability advocates, encouraging them to align their decisions with investor preferences and drive positive change both within their organizations and across industries. To mitigate the eco-agency problem, we claim, on the basis of our study, that a unique environmental disclosure is required. By embracing transparency as a strategic advantage, corporations can transcend traditional reporting boundaries, heralding a new era in which investors implement their ecological preferences in the capital market pricing mechanism

On the intensity interferometry and the second-order correlation function g(2)g^{(2)} in astrophysics

Most observational techniques in astronomy can be understood as exploiting the various forms of the first-order correlation function g^(1). As however demonstrated by the Narrabri Stellar Intensity Interferometer back in the 1960's by Hanbury Brown & Twiss, and which is the first experiment to measure the second-order correlation function g^(2), light can carry more information than simply its intensity, spectrum and polarization. Since this experiment, theoretical and laboratory studies of non-classical properties of light have become a very active field of research, namely quantum optics. Despite the variety of results in this field, astrophysics remained focused essentially on first-order coherence. In this paper, we study the possibility that quantum properties of light could be observed in cosmic sources. We provide the basic mathematical ingredients about the first and the second order correlation functions, applied to the modern context of astronomical observations. The exploitation of g^(2) is certainly richer than what a modern intensity interferometer could bring and is particularly interesting for sources of non-thermal light. We conclude by briefly presenting why microquasars in our galaxy and their extragalactic parents can represent an excellent first target in the optical/near-infrared where to observe non-thermal light, and test the use of g^(2) in astrophysical sources.Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in A&A. Vastly rewritten. Much more precise and (hopefully) accurat