The European financial markets have been placed on the path to a sustainable and green transition. The European Commission embraced with the EU Green Deal a new growth strategy built on a sustainable economic model that aims at making the EU the first carbon neutral continent by 2050. This generational economic and industrial transition set by the EU Green Deal will require at least 1 trillion euro in public and private sustainable investments. This chapter analyzes how derivatives markets can contribute to support the green transition, enable private markets to raise capital towards sustainable goals, and help market participants to manage the market and transition risk to a sustainable economy. “Green derivatives” like ESG- linked swaps, emission allowance futures, extreme weather events derivatives, are examples of financial innovation is dealing with climate-related risk. This chapter focuses on the EU Strategy for Financing the Transition to a Sustainable Economy in the EU and offers a looks at what the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is doing in the US on climate-related risk and derivatives markets. The chapter offers some early critical considerations on the private-public synergies and opportunities that might result from the growth and expansion of sustainable derivatives markets and the possible risks that policymakers should consider in the evolution process of such markets.

Technology (especially the high energy-consuming blockchain) is not often associated with environmental goals but the elements of peer-to-peer networks, sharing economy and ‘direct’ finance in the Fintech world present coherence and continuity with the ESG world. Furthermore, the potential of Fintech in reducing costs, connecting people on a global scale, improving financial inclusion, diversification and resilience offer great opportunities also in the area of sustainable finance, advancing societal factors. Nonetheless, relevant risks and limitations must be considered, too. This chapter will first introduce the emerging area of sustainable digital finance, with particular regard to environmental objectives. Second, it will focus on ‘green Fintech’ facilitating capital raising. In particular, the chapter will analyse the main legal and technical challenges related to green financing, with special regard to green crowdfunding, green tokens offerings and other Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-based opportunities, also considering recent EU regulatory initiatives, also advancing some policy proposals.

Over the last few decades, executive pay has undergone several major reinterpretations, which have affected both its design and regulation.Our chapter provides an overview of the trajectory of executive pay,including the recent trend toward integration of sustainability and ESG targets in compensation packages.Our chapter also provides empirical evidence as to the prevalence of ESG-linked executive pay in public listed companies. Analysing a sample of 8,649 publicly traded firms covering 58 countries in the period 2002–2021, we show that a growing number of listed firms include drivers involving sustainable performance in their executive remuneration packages. However, we identify notable differences associated with sector and country characteristics in this regard. For example, we find that, in countries with better government features, firms are more likely to adopt ESG-linked compensation.Overall, our empirical analysis presents a mixed picture. Some of our findings could be consistent with the idea that ESG-linked compensation exacerbates the agency problem of executive pay. We cannot, however, rule out the possibility that such compensation provides a powerful incentive towards more sustainable corporate practices in the future.

It follows from the usage-based view of language adopted in most strands of Construction Grammar that the constructicons of speakers of what is considered to be one and the same language will differ along social, or ‘lectal’, lines. This chapter explains the inherent theoretical importance of lectal variation for Construction Grammar and surveys existing construction-based work on synchronic language variation. Four major research strands are discussed: (i) studies aimed at the analysis of the form and/or meaning poles of constructions from specific lects; (ii) comparisons of the properties of a given construction or a set of related constructions across different lects; (iii) quantitative studies of grammatical alternations which include lectal variables in their research design; and (iv) studies of social variables involved in the propagation of constructional changes through communities of speakers. The chapter also identifies a number of challenges and open questions.

The care for sustainability is one of the most urgent problems addressed by policy makers. It requires combined effort by multiple players for its efficiency. There are various levels at which different tools of multiple character are being introduced. Eventually, they turn into policies and actions by private businesses and public agencies. These different instruments can be of legislative and regulatory nature introduced on various levels: the UN conventions, communications, policies and protocols, the EU legislation, the Member States, regional and local authorities. As a result, they take a shape of instruments of various types. The range of non-regulatory tools that supplement the regulatory instruments is wide and often takes the form of financial measures. They can be divided into four groups – incentives, tradable instruments, fines and contractual compensations. All these instruments differ in terms of their character, reach and efficiency. Not necessarily being perfect, still, they contribute to the overall re-shift of approach and help transforming the current anxiety for the nature to tangible actions that protect it. The text addresses questions that are not limited to analyses of the efficiency of existing financial tools but also refer to what else could be done to enhance them and make them even more efficient.

This chapter, structured in three sections, discusses an aspect of significant importance in relation to sustainable finance under EU secondary law: the gradual shift from capital markets to banking regulation. Section 21.1 sets the scene, by briefly overviewing the initiatives of (mainly) the (European) Commission in relation to sustainable finance – which are mainly related to EU capital markets regulation, albeit with an impact on credit institutions as well – and the rules adopted by the European Parliament and Council during the period 2019–2021. The focus of the following section 21.2 is on the legislative proposals submitted by the Commission in 2021 to amend the CRD IV and the CRR in relation to sustainability and contribution to the green transition. After a general overview of this legislative ‘banking package’ and some introductory remarks on the proposed amendments (including the harmonised definitions of the ESG-related risks by amendment of the CRR), this section presents the key proposed new rules (by amendment of the CRD IV) which relate to governance issues, ESG risks, the supervisory review and evaluation process (SREP) and the enhanced competent authorities’ powers, as well as the (further) amendments proposed to the CRR. Section 21.3 contains the concluding remarks.

In this chapter, a central tenet of Construction Grammar is explored: the idea that linguistic knowledge on all levels (e.g., lexicon, morphosyntax, pragmatics) is related in a network fashion, with the building blocks of language (i.e., constructions) forming different types of connections (i.e., links). In general, we discuss the ingredients of constructional networks with our main focus on construction-external links (vertical and horizontal). Another aim of the chapter is to embed constructional networks into a larger domain-general theory of networks but also to demarcate constructional modeling from other network models in linguistics, like Connectionism or models of sociolinguistic propagation. We also glance at how diachronic network change is currently being conceptualized and end by a discussion of open issues.

Over the last four decades, Construction Grammar has developed into a rich, robust conceptual framework for analyzing language in its entirety, based on the crucial assumption that language by its nature is a complex and ever-adapting and adaptable system designed for communication. The starting point was Charles J. Fillmore’s vision for an approach that would allow us to analyze grammatical organization of (any) language in such a way that we could answer the broad question of what it means to know one’s language and to use its grammatical resources with native-like fluency by individual speakers within a given language community. Put differently, this framing aims for generalizations that will naturally include systematic observations about meaning and conditions of language use as integral parts of grammatical descriptions.

This chapter discusses the importance of decision-making and agency problems in bank governance with particular focus on the role of the board of directors in addressing sustainability risks that are increasingly affecting the banking business. It considers traditional agency theories that underpin corporate governance and suggests that they do not offer a full explanation of the ‘collective’ agency problems that exist in large complex organisations, such as banks and other financial institutions. Human agency theory offers an alternative theory that emphasises the importance of organisational culture in determining standards, norms and values that influence agent behaviour. As to bank boards, the chapter stresses that although their role is primary, regulatory intervention may be necessary to ensure that organisational practices are adequately managing agency problems regarding sustainability concerns. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for how bank governance and business practices could be improved to support society’s sustainability objectives.

As part of a broader policy agenda promoting more sustainable financial markets, legislative and policy initiatives within the European Union in recent years have explored the activation of micro-prudential requirements for banks and other financial intermediaries with a view to incentivise regulated institutions to change business models and investment patterns and shift funding towards projects and beneficiaries identified as sustainable. This is compatible with traditional regulatory objectives (only) to the extent that regulatory measures try to enhance the sensitivity of existing arrangements vis-à-vis new types of sustainability-related risks, the most obvious example being climate-related risks to the viability and profitability of existing loan and investment portfolios. This chapter assesses the relevant policy initiatives in the light of recent promulgations by international standard-setters, and critically discusses the potential and the functional limits of micro-prudential regulation as a driver towards more sustainable lending – as well as potential repercussions on the existing prudential frameworks.

Ever since its conception in the 1980s, the scope of what is understood by ‘construction grammar’ has evolved to a point where the constructional enterprise has become a full branch of linguistics in its own right. It can therefore be a daunting challenge for newcomers to come to grips with different research directions that have been pursued under a constructional banner, and even seasoned construction grammarians are at risk of misunderstanding each other. The goal of this chapter is therefore to offer a comparative guide for navigating the constructional landscape and to show that the existence of different constructional flavors is a healthy and necessary response to the problem of analyzing complex linguistic structures, provided that the community maintains a consensus about its core concepts.

Many constructions have both metaphoric and non-metaphoric uses. For example, English transitives can either involve metaphor, as in she devoured the experience, or be non-metaphoric, as in she devoured the meat. On the other hand, constructions such as the idiom glutton for punishment or the compound verb greenlight can never be literal. This chapter argues that ‘optionally metaphoric’ constructions, such as transitives, show how metaphoric meaning is often based on non-metaphoric meaning, whereas ‘inherently metaphoric’ constructions, as in greenlight, demonstrate the role of conceptual metaphors in constructional semantics.

The enactment of the European Non-Financial-Reporting-Directive (2014/95/EU) and the new (proposed) Corporate-Sustainability-Reporting-Directive as its successor introduced aspects of corporate social responsibility to the world of financial reporting for almost all listed corporations in the common market. This established a path dependency between the traditional financial and the (new) non-financial reporting regime. As the consequence, the actual non-financial reporting regime does not provide a unique scope of application and does not distinguish between business entities with and without an impact on corporate social responsibility. Nevertheless, the actual content of financial reporting and non-financial reporting is fundamentally different since financial information is a number-based information instrument and sustainability information is a text-based information instrument. Moreover, financial information and non-financial information do not require the same corporate governance procedure for drafting and examining. Finally, it is doubtful that the liability regime of financial disclosure can be used as some kind of blueprint for a civil liability regime for non-financial disclosure. Since the existing framework for civil liability in financial disclosure cannot be used for cases of incorrect non-financial disclosure, it is necessary to develop an independent regime of civil liability for incorrect non-financial disclosure. The existing path dependency between financial and non-financial disclosure prevents this necessary step.