Paraic McGee
PhD Candidate
- ORCID NUMBER 0000-0001-5049-3155
Biography
Paraic is a graduate of Waterford Institute of Technology, where he completed the Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Finance and Investment. During his time at WIT, he was awarded a Certificate of Academic Excellence for his undergraduate studies. Following graduation, Paraic worked as a Research Assistant at the AIB Centre for Finance and Business Research and in financial control in the green building sector.
Following a competitive process, Paraic was awarded a WIT President's Co-Fund PhD Scholarship and commenced his doctoral studies in January 2020. He is attached to the AIB Centre for Finance and Business Research under the supervision of Dr Tom Egan and Professor Sheila O' Donohoe. Paraic's research is titled "Risk disclosure in green bond prospectuses and its impact on price: An EU Exploratory Study". Specifically, the research seeks to examine how risk disclosure manifests into the pricing of European green bonds.
Research Overview
The purpose of the study is to explore risk disclosure in green bond prospectuses – which should set forth the risk associated with the issuer and the issue, and assess how this risk manifests itself into the initial pricing of the bonds. Grounded in signalling and agency theory, textual analysis will be conducted to assess the informativeness of risk disclosure in approximately 1,000 EU corporate green bond prospectuses issued between 2014 and 2020. This research will contribute to the academic literature on corporate risk disclosure and corporate bond under-pricing, where there has been a paucity of research in a sustainable finance context. The research is timely as it will assess sustainable finance risk and pricing prior to the EU Green Bond Standard and Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy. Additionally, the findings will be of interest to Irish policymakers and regulators, including the Finance Green Ireland Committee, with the ongoing development of the National Sustainable Finance Roadmap and the aim to maintain Ireland's reputation as a Centre of Excellence for ESG bonds.
Dissemination and awards
Paraic has presented his research at Irish Accounting and Finance Association Doctoral Colloquia in 2020 and 2021. He was awarded supplementary funding from the Irish Accounting and Finance Association to complete methodology training in 2021. He has also presented his research at the British Accounting and Finance Association Doctoral Masterclass in 2021. In 2020 Paraic was selected by the Irish Accounting and Finance Association to be the Irish nominee at the 2021 American Accounting Association Doctoral Consortium at Deloitte University Texas. Paraic is also the Irish Accounting and Finance Association's nominee for the 2022 European Accounting Association PhD Forum in Bergen, Norway.