Publications

§ Denotes corresponding authors; * Denotes equal contribution

Working papers

S. Cenci^§ and E. Biffis Diversity of corporate emission abatement mechanisms and the role of emission targets Under Review

Journal articles

S. Cenci^§, H. Asgharian, L. Liu, M.Rei, and M.Zollo. Does competitive pressure drive effective corporate environmental actions? Journal of Cleaner Production 511 145585 (2025)

Short summary

We systematically analyse the sustainability behaviour of a global sample of publicly traded firms to examine if and how competitive pressure pushes them to implement effective behavioural changes to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Our results suggest that competitive pressure induces firms to diversify investments across a broad spectrum of environmental initiatives. Importantly, diversification results from a decreased relative investment in risk mitigation and stakeholder engagement activities counterbalanced by an increased relative investment in innovation capabilities, and it is associated with a positive abatement potential. Overall, our analysis suggests that competitive pressures can be a driving force of effective corporate mitigation actions that integrate response diversity mechanisms to address environmental challenges.

A. Rakotoharisoa, S. Cenci, R. Arcucci. A high resolution spatially consistent global dataset for CO₂ Monitoring. Remote Sensing 17 (9), 1617 (2025)

Short summary

This paper presents a high resolution XCO₂ dataset that will help monitor atmospheric CO₂ pollution daily on a global scale at a greater level of detail compared to existing datasets. Using super resolution, we increase the resolution of the OCO-2-derived dataset from 0.625°x0.5° to 0.03°x0.04° and show that our product maintains the quality of the original dataset while consistently improving the detail of the atmospheric pollution field. We conduct a benchmark that highlights how our dataset outperforms similar products and present a use-case of CO₂ monitoring at region-level. In conclusion, this work provides a complementary approach to the area of global seamless fields reconstruction and focuses on the adjacent problem of improving specific features of existing datasets.

S. Cenci^§ and E. Biffis^§ Lack of harmonisation of greenhouse gases reporting standards and the methane emissions gap Nature Communications 16, 1537 (2025)

Short summary

We investigate the impact of inconsistent non-carbon dioxide reporting standards and identify a substantial methane reporting gap. Between 2014 and 2023, publicly traded firms across sectors and geographies underreported 170 MtCO₂e of methane by using Global Warming Potential (GWP) factors that deviate from carbon accounting guidelines (specifically, GWP₁₀₀). Changing the counterfactual from GWP₁₀₀ to GWP₂₀—an approach recently adopted in certain jurisdictions and initiatives—raises the cumulative gap to 3,300 MtCO₂e. This discrepancy is particularly relevant for the Energy sector and has significant implications for companies’ transition risks. Notably, since our analysis only covers direct emissions, it likely understates the full extent of underreporting across the value chains.

S. Cenci^§, M. Burato, M. Rei, and M. Zollo Assessing the effectiveness of interdependent corporate sustainability choices npj Climate Action 4, 25 (2025)

Short summary

We developed an empirical framework to investigate the implications of choice interdependence on companies’ integrated financial and environmental performance. Our results suggest that the sustainability choices of companies in energy and energy-intensive sectors emerge from effective decision-making processes and have a larger impact on performance than random allocation of actions. However, comparing the behaviour of companies in our sample with hypothetical quasi-optimal (“satisficing”) choices, we observe a considerable under-performance, a low choice differentiation across the population, a significant over-investment in risk mitigation activities, and under-investment in developing innovation capabilities.

S. Cenci^§ and S. Tang^§ Addressing companies’ low-carbon transition challenges requires diversified investments in environmental initiatives Climatic Change 177(11):161 (2024)

Short summary

We provided an empirical framework to study response diversity mechanisms in crucial sectors for the low-carbon transition. Our study provides empirical evidence supporting the crucial role that response diversity can play as a sustainability strategy in socio-economic systems and the importance of integrating adaptation and mitigation initiatives to address companies’ interconnected low-carbon transition challenges.

S. Cenci^§ Overlooked biases from misidentifications of causal structures. The Journal of Finance and Data Science Volume 10, (2024), 100127

Short summary

We show that a systematic underestimation of ex-ante identification of causal structure generates a series of overlooked biases in empirical studies in finance. We discuss the practical implications of these biases and suggest strategies to address them.

S. Cenci^§, M. Burato, M. Rei, and M. Zollo^§ The alignment of companies’ sustainability behavior and emissions with global climate targets Nature Communications 14, Article number: 7831 (2023)

Short summary

We developed a systematic approach, based on extensive analyses of non-financial disclosure data, to track corporates’ climate actions. We documented the evolution of corporate efforts to limit emissions in the past ten years and identify the behavioural differences that characterise companies with emissions pathways aligned with the targets set by the Paris Agreement. See news story here

M. Burato, S. Tang, V. Vastola, and S. Cenci^§. Organizational system thinking as a cognitive framework to meet climate targets. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 120(41):e2309510120 (2023).

Short summary

In this study, we argue that large organisations, just like individuals, can exhibit system thinking capabilities. We develop a theoretical framework for organisational system thinking and an empirical approach to estimate it from observational data. Then, we show that the emission pathways of system-thinking organisations are substantially more aligned with the climate target set by the Paris Agreement. See news story here

S. Cenci^§ A large-scale analysis of the heterogeneity of markets’ reactions to the disclosure of non-financial information Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investments 14(4), 913–940 (2023)

Short summary

We develop a non-parametric approach to estimate heterogeneities in markets’ reactions to the disclosure of non-financial information. We show that investors value the information content of non-financial disclosure, particularly when this information is integrated within a financial context. However, the effect is heterogeneous across the population and it depends largely on the level of information asymmetry between insiders and outsiders.

S. Cenci^§ and S. Kealhofer A causal approach to test empirical capital structure regularities The Journal of Finance and Data Science 8, 214-232 (2022)

Short summary

We derive and empirically test a structural causal model for the determinant of leverage ratios. Our findings provide support for the causal role of variables that measure the potential for information asymmetry concerning firms’ market values. Overall, our work provide a crucial step to connect capital structure theories with their empirical tests beyond simple correlations.

R.G. Krishnan, S. Cenci, L. Bourouiba Mitigating bias in estimating epidemic severity due to heterogeneity of epidemic onset and data aggregation Annals of epidemiology 65, 1-14 (2022)

Short summary

We characterise bias in the estimation of 𝑅₀ from a merged data set when the epidemics of the sub-regions, used in the merger, exhibit delays in onset. We propose a method to mitigate this bias, and study its efficacy on synthetic data as well as real-world influenza and COVID-19 data.

S. Cenci, L. P. Medeiros, G. Sugihara, and S. Saavedra Assessing the predictability of nonlinear time series under smooth parameter changes Journal of the Royal Society Interface 17, 162 (2020)

Short summary

We develop a systematic methodology to estimate the predictability of nonlinear dynamical systems evolving in continuously changing environments..

S. Cenci^§ and S. Saavedra Nonparametric estimation of the structural stability of non-equilibrium community dynamics Nature Ecology & Evolution 3, 912–918 (2019)

Short summary

We develop a data-driven nonparametric framework to estimate the time-varying tolerance of non-equilibrium community dynamics to environmental perturbations from nonlinear time series

S. Cenci, G. Sugihara and S. Saavedra Regularized S-map for inferring and forecasting with noisy ecological time series Methods in Ecology and Evolution 10: 650– 660 (2019)

Short summary

We introduce regularized locally weighted linear fits with state-space-dependent kernel functions to estimate Jacobian coefficients from nonlinear stochastic time series.

S. Cenci and S. Saavedra Uncertainty quantification of the effect of biotic interactions on community dynamics from nonlinear time series data Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 15: 20180695 (2018)

Short summary

We propose a statistical analysis to estimate the uncertainty associated with time-varying parameters inferred from non-equilibrium time series data

S. Cenci^∗, C. Song^∗ and S. Saavedra Rethinking the importance of the structure of ecological networks under an environment-dependent framework Ecology Evolution 8: 6852– 6859 (2018)

Short summary

We challenge the view that network structure is a good predictor of resilience in complex systems. We propose a research agenda to systematically investigate the structural risk associated with network structures under an environment-dependent framework

S. Cenci and S. Saavedra Structural Stability of Nonlinear Population Dynamics Physical Review E 97, 012401 (2018)

Short summary

We study the structural stability of deterministic and stochastic nonlinear population dynamics models

S. Cenci, A. Montero-Casta o and S. Saavedra Estimating the effect of the reorganization of the interactions on the adaptability of species to changing environments Journal of Theoretical Biology 437: 115-125 (2018)

Short summary

We introduce a novel statistical analysis to compare species’ likelihood to adapt to fast changing environments

S. Saavedra, S. Cenci, E. del-Val, K. Boege and R. P. Rohr Reorganization of interaction networks modulates the persistence of species in late successional stages Journal of Animal Ecology 86: 1136-1146, (2017)

Short summary

We introduce a novel statistical analysis to reveal the effect of the reorganization of species interactions on community persistence during community assembly.

Conference papers

A. Rakotoharisoa, S. Cenci, and R. Arcucci, Evaluating the Impact of Atmospheric CO₂ Emissions via Super Resolution of Remote Sensing Data. In Franco, L., de Mulatier, C., Paszynski,M., Krzhizhanovskaya, V. V., Dongarra, J. J., and Sloot, P. M. A., editors, Computational Science–ICCS 2024, 383–390, Cham, (2024). Springer Nature Switzerland.

Briefing papers and consultations

Orgen, P. and Cenci, S. (2025) Open consultation: UK Sustainability Reporting Standards UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources

Abdelrehim, N., Cenci, S., Corsini, L., Dixon, J., Jones, C., Khanna, S., Mathison, C., Petersen, K. T., Turley, C., Whitmarsh, L. (2022). The Urgency of Climate Mitigation for COP27 and Beyond. UUCN Briefing.