Bren School OF ENVIRONMENTAL

SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT

University of California, Santa Barbara

 

Presents

Dr. Dennis Aigner

Adjunct Professor and Former Dean, The Bren School of Environmental Science & Management 2000-2005; Professor of Economics/Public Policy, UC Irvine

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Bren Hall 1414 5:30 to 6:30 pm

A COLLOQUIUM TITLED:

“CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

AND THE BOTTOM LINE”

 

“Corporate Social Responsibility, going beyond what's absolutely necessary in the areas of environment, worker health & safety, and community investment, has gotten a lot of traction among major corporations over the past decade. But it has its detractors. We will explore the debate around CSR and look at some of the evidence – both academic and other – and surrounding the empirical relationship between corporate environmental and social performance and financial performance, which forms the basis for the claim that businesses can ‘do well by doing good.’ We will also comment on CSR in insurance and banking.”

 

Biography

 

From  2000-05, Dennis J. Aigner was Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Presently he is Professor of Management & Economics at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine.  He was the Dean at GSM/UCI from 1988-97. Before that, he was Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles.  He received his BS and Ph.D. degrees in Agricultural Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and holds an MA in Applied Statistics from that same institution.  He was on the teaching faculties at the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin-Madison prior to his appointment at USC in 1976.

Aigner's publication record includes several books and numerous articles on statistical and econometric methodology, and applied economics.  He was founding editor of the Journal of Econometrics and one of its co-editors for 20 years. His research interests include corporate environmental management, U.S. competitiveness in global markets, foreign investment, state and local economic issues, and the market for workers’ compensation insurance.

From 1990-92, Aigner served as Chair of the California Worker’s Compensation Rate Study Commission. Within that same period, he also served on the National Research Council’s Committee on the National Energy Modeling System, which conducted a two-year evaluation of the U.S. Department of Energy’s energy modeling and forecasting program.  More recently he concluded service on another National Research Council panel, this time to review the research program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. Presently he serves as a member of the National Advisory Committee to the USEPA Administrator on the environmental aspects of NAFTA.

Aigner’s current research interests include empirical and theoretical work relating to the linkage between corporate environmental performance and financial performance. For several years now he has organized a research workshop on behalf of the EPA on “Capital Markets and Environmental Performance” that explores the topic with academic researchers, practitioners, and members of the corporate sector. More broadly, this is but one aspect of the “business case for sustainability”, which underlies a powerful new trend of environmental protection and economic viability.

 

Hosted by Ernst von Weizsäcker

For more information or assistance in accommodating a disability, please contact bjdanetra@bren.ucsb.edu