Recent Development in Sustainable Finance, New Trends and Future Directions

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, both theorists and practitioners have come to appreciate the rich and evolving field of sustainable finance. However, the existing literature remains limited due to the disconnected perspectives offered through a sub-set rather than the entire corpus of sustainable finance. To address this gap, this Special Issue will compile a range of state-of-the-art research papers examining the performance, trends, and intellectual structure of sustainable finance. To this end, this Special Issue will engage in collecting and reviewing high-impact scholarly articles on sustainable finance research using big data analytics techniques through artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning in the context of sustainable finance.

This Special Issue is particularly timely given the accelerating global issues of climate change, loss of biodiversity, and expanding social inequalities. Financial institutions and markets are progressively seen as essential enablers in leading the way towards sustainable and inclusive economic systems. This will enable legitimising sustainable green monetary policies, market liberalism-layered central banking, and the ongoing transition from managing environmental risk to actively pricing sustainability. Furthermore, integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into investment and lending decisions, alongside the proliferation of green bonds, climate risk disclosure, and impact investment vehicles, attest to the transformative shift in global finance.

In this Special Issue, some selected papers will attempt to tackle the complex issues of cashless digital currencies and the design of sustainable financial mechanisms that can direct capital toward sustainable outcomes and mitigate systemic risk associated with environmental and social externalities. This Special Issue will close such gaps by stimulating rigorous scholarly discussion on how financial instruments, markets, and regulatory frameworks can be leveraged to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the creation of resilient, inclusive economies.

This Special Issue will advance scholarly understanding of how financial systems can actively contribute to sustainable development objectives. It will explore innovative frameworks, methodologies, and robust empirical analyses that elucidate the role of finance in addressing contemporary sustainability challenges. It particularly encourages interdisciplinary research that intersects finance with environmental sciences, behavioural economics, and policy studies.

We welcome both original research articles and comprehensive review papers that investigate various facets of sustainable finance. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Sustainable finance frameworks and financial innovation;
• ESG integration and investment decision-making;
• Green bonds, green loans, and other environmental finance instruments;
• Climate risk pricing and financial stability implications;
• Impact investing and measuring social/environmental outcomes;
• Regulatory policies promoting sustainable financial markets;
• The role of financial markets in achieving the SDGs;
• Behavioural insights into sustainable investment choices;
• Machine learning and big data applications in ESG and climate finance;
• Financial sector contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
• Comparative studies across markets or regulatory environments.

Dr. Muhammad Ishaq Bhatti
Dr. Walid Bakry
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Financial Studies is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainable finance
• financial innovation
• blockchain
• the Internet of Things (IoT)