Book

With climate risks growing, climate action facing political headwinds in many countries, and international cooperation increasingly challenged, Lily Hsueh’s new book sheds light on how the world’s largest corporations have taken proactive action on climate change during the years leading up to and after the Paris Agreement. Drawing on insights from economics, political science, and management, Hsueh's political economic framework centers corporations and their leaders as key players in a nested structure of climate change governance. Hsueh shows that corporate leaders' climate actions are shaped by bottom-up and top-down institutions and incentives involving firm, regulatory, and global governance. To navigate uncertainty, corporate responses to the climate challenge are therefore an interplay of internal firm leadership, complementary capabilities in adjacent areas, and strategic and proactive engagement with regulatory process and global governance. Sophisticated large-N statistical analyses of global businesses’ climate mitigation and performance from 2011 to 2020 and illustrative company case studies substantiate the demand for, and supply of, global businesses’ climate mitigation, across sectors, and in developed and developing countries. 

For more: This book will be available in September 2025 from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Penguin Random House. Also, MIT Press has selected the book for a fully-funded, open access edition.