Yale Carbon Finance Speaker Series Kicks Off with "The History of Financial Innovation"

New Haven, Conn., September 12, 2007 — Professors William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst will present "The History of Financial Innovation," the first lecture in the Yale Carbon Finance Speaker Series, on Thursday, September 13, from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. in Luce Hall, located at 34 Hillhouse Avenue. The event is free and open to the public; a reception will follow.

The Carbon Finance Speaker Series is part of the Environmental Finance project at Yale, which seeks to understand the role of carbon finance in accelerating solutions to climate change. Hosted by the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale and the International Center of Finance at the Yale School of Management, the series will feature monthly presentations during the 2007-2008 academic year by business leaders who are managing investments and initiatives for their companies in the carbon markets and will culminate in a year-end Carbon Finance conference.

Professors Goetzmann and Rouwenhorst will discuss the 4,000-year evolution of finance. The presentation will draw largely from their book The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations that Created Modern Capital Markets, which details the history of financial markets, loans, interest rates, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, the corporation, and the New York Stock Exchange, among other financial tools and institutions. The lecture will provide a historical context for thinking about carbon markets in subsequent lectures in the series.

The Carbon Finance Speaker Series is funded through generous support from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. Organizational support is provided by the Business and the Environment Club, the Yale Office of Sustainability, Yale Project on Climate Change, Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, and the Renewable Energy and International Law Network (REIL Network).