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University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

Professor Gordon L. Clark

  • Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment
  • Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford
  • Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, Melbourne.

Academic Profile

Gordon L Clark DSc (Oxon) FBA is the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment with cross-appointments in the Saïd Business School and the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University and holds a Professorial Fellowship at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. He is also Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor at Monash University's Faculty of Business and Economics (Melbourne). Previous academic appointments have been at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Law School (Senior Research Associate), the University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School and Monash University. Other honours include being Andrew Mellon Fellow at the US National Academy of Sciences and Visiting Scholar Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst at the University of Marburg.

He has held a number of senior administrative posts including Associate Dean (Finance, Graduate Studies) and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Monash University (Melbourne), Chair of the Faculty Board of Anthropology and Geography (Oxford), and most recently Director and Head of the Oxford University Centre for the Environment. Professor Clark has served on the Social Science Committee of the British Academy, is an elected member of the Oxford University's Socially Responsible Investment Committee, is an employer-nominated trustee of the Oxford Staff Pension Scheme, is a consultant to MetallRente GmbH, is a Founding Governor of the UK Pension Policy Institute, and is a consultant to the Swedish Government's Buffer-fund inquiry. He also advised The Kay Review on Equity Markets and Long-Term Decision Making.

An economic geographer, he is interested in the responsibilities and behaviour of investors as regards long-term sustainable investment. This has involved research on institutions' proxy-voting behaviour (Environment and Planning A 2008), the strategies of corporate engagement given concerns about environmental liabilities and the sensitivity of firms to brand image and reputation (Environment and Planning A 2005), the UK regulation of corporate disclosure on issues related to environment and social responsibility (University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law 2009), and the governance of investment strategy which has an explicit long-term mandate (Asian Journal of International Law 2011). His current research focuses upon the governance of investment decision-making in the context of market volatility and long-term obligations. In part, this project has developed in collaboration with Oxford colleagues and graduate students as well as the UNPRI, Mercer, the Telos Project, Towers Watson, and the project led by Professor Tessa Hebb at Carleton University (Ottawa) funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Related research is focused on the design and management of investment institutions including reference to insourcing, out-sourcing, and off-shoring activities and the demand and supply of financial services relevant to pension funds, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds. Papers on this topic have been published in the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance (2004, 2006, 2007), the Rotman International Journal of Pension Management (2008, 2010, 2011), the Journal of Asset Management (2008), Risk Management and Insurance Review (2009), and Pensions: An International Journal (2010, 2012). With Adam Dixon and Ashby Monk, their monograph on the governance and investment strategies of sovereign wealth funds is scheduled for publication by Princeton University Press in 2013.

His research on household financial decision-making has focused on long-term saving utilising theories and methods from the behavioural and social sciences in the context of risk and uncertainty. Papers on this topic have been published in the Transactions IBG (2007), Ageing and Society (2008), Environment and Planning A (2009), Pensions: An International Journal (2009), the Journal of Economic Geography (2010) and Urban Studies (2011) supported, in part, by the ESRC, Mercer and Towers Wyatt. With Kendra Strauss and Janelle Knox-Hayes, he is co-author of Saving for Retirement (OUP, 2012). Recent related books include the co-edited Managing Financial Risks: From the Global to the Local (OUP 2009) (with Ashby Monk and Adam Dixon), The Geography of Finance (OUP 2007) (with Dariusz Wójcik), Pension Fund Capitalism (OUP 2000), and European Pensions & Global Finance (OUP 2003).

Teaching

MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy

Current graduate students include:
  • Thomas Ashfold
    Realising the potential of work-time reduction in the 'developed' world; overcoming the perverse employer and employee incentives that encourage long work hours
  • Dorothee Franzen
    Impact of regulation on the asset investment of defined benefit pension funds
  • Heather Hachigian
    Governance frameworks for responsible investing: the case of sovereign sponsored funds.
  • Irem Kok
    Transparency and corporate governance: a comparative study of shale gas controversies in the US and UK
  • Sarah McGill
    The economic governance of global commodity markets
  • Alex Money
    Corporate water risk: a concept in search of consensus
  • Dane Rook
    Sustainable investment beliefs: behavioural ecologies of expectation and long-term decision making
  • Aisha Saad
    Contesting neoliberalism through the corporate social responsibility regime
  • Yukie Saito
    Corporate engagement for sustainable business in development
  • Yin Yang
    Assessment and governance of urban infrastructure for meeting the challenges of climate change - case studies of London and Beijing
D.Phil. students successfully completing since 2002:
  • Nicholas Howarth (2012)
    An integrated theory of economic and political change: including four papers on the shift to a low carbon economy
  • Caitlin McElroy (2012)
    Corporate social responsibility in the extractive and energy industries: effects on resource use and indigenous development
  • Rajiv Sharma (2012)
    The role of private institutional investors in developing urban infrastructure assets
  • Csaba Burger (2011)
    Occupational pensions in Germany - an economic geography
  • Taylor Gray (2011)
    A corporate geography of Canada: governance and networks
  • Claire Woods (2011)
    Legal frameworks for sustainable investment
  • Eric Knight (2010)
    The finance of climate change
  • Leng Lee (2010)
    Rural-urban migration in China
  • Ville-Pekka Sorsa (2010)
    Pension fund capitalism in Europe: institutional organisation and governance of investment in Finnish pension insurance companies
  • Adam Dixon (2009)
    The geography of European financial integration and long-term asset management
  • Janelle Knox-Hayes (2009)
    Constructing an international market for carbon trading: an institutional perspective.
  • Lisa Hagerman (2008)
    Public pension fund investment in urban revitalization.
  • Ashby Monk (2008)
    The burden of corporate pension liabilities in the emerging global economy.
  • Kendra Strauss (2008)
    Choice, risk and the context of decision making in UK pensions.
  • Emiko Caerlewy-Smith (2007)
    Investment decision-making: attitudes and actions of UK defined benefit pension fund trustees.
  • James Salo (2006)
    Corporate environmental performance: governance, intangible assets, and financial markets.
  • Morag Torrance (2006)
    The financialisation of the urban infrastructure landscape: unravelling financial flows into urban geographies.
  • Terry Babcock-Lumish (2004)
    Communities of trust: decision making and innovation
  • Tessa Hebb (2004)
    Pension fund corporate engagement: causes and consequences.
  • Dariusz Wójcik (2002)
    Corporate governance and capital market integration in Europe: an economic geography perspective.

Selected Publications

Books (since 2001)
Papers and Articles (since 2008)

Recent papers with colleagues can be found at the Working Papers in Employment, Work and Finance website.