This course covers recent developments in the academic finance literature with a focus on social preferences. Under the traditional finance paradigm, agents’ willingness to pay for financial assets is solely determined by the net present value of future cash flows that they expect to receive as owners of these assets. However, there is strong evidence, that investors also take other considerations into account when making portfolio decisions, such as ethical considerations. Such considerations will in general not only affect portfolio decisions, but also corporate decisions, as their stock price will depend partly on how social preferences accord with their investment and product decisions. 
In this course, we will start with a survey of papers that have modelled such social preferences and then cover many of the central and recent papers in this field.

There are two main goals. The first goal is to familiarize students with recent papers in a very promising research area. The second goal is to provide a learning opportunity for students to summarize the main contributions of the assigned papers, their economic intuition, and point out potential limitations and directions for future extensions. To reach the latter goal, each student(or group) is expected to provide a report on the presented paper.

Students are required to attend all classes. 

In an introductory meeting, it will be discussed which papers will be presented by the instructor and which ones will be assigned to course participants. These latter  papers will be presented by students and discussed in class. Each student is expected to present two papers. It is also possible for students to work in groups, but it is expected that each group member actively takes part in the presentations. There are two main goals. The first goal is to familiarize students with recent papers in a very promising research area. The second goal is to provide a learning opportunity for students to summarize the main contributions of the assigned papers, their economic intuition, and point out potential limitations and directions for future extensions. To reach the latter goal, each student(or group) is expected to provide a report on the presented paper.

The course will involve attending all classes, presenting the assigned papers and actively engag- ing in classroom discussions.

• 40% - grade for the presentation of the assigned papers
• 30% - grade for presentation slides plus a referee report on one of the papers presented
• 30% - attendance and active participation in all classes

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