Effectiveness,Limitations,and Policy Optimization of Green Finance in Promoting the Green Transformation of Enterprises:Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt
As micro entities of economic development and environmental protection,green transformation is an important strat-egy for enterprises to gain sustainable competitive advantages under environmental pressure.Considering the characteristics of output uncertainty and long cycle of green transformation,it is difficult for enterprises to spontaneously carry out green transformation.Green finance combines economic and ecological benefits,and can guide the transfer of credit resources from high-energy consuming and high-polluting sectors to low-energy consuming and environmentally friendly sectors,thereby achieving effective allocation of funds in green industries.Among them,the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone(GFRIPZ)is one of the most important green finance policies in China.However,after 7 years of implementation,it is still un-known whether GFRIPZ can be precise and effective in promoting green transformation for different types of enterprises.Therefore,this paper takes the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in the Yangtze River Economic Belt(YREB)from 2008 to 2021 as samples,and uses a difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of GFRIPZ on the green transformation of enterprises.The results indicate that GFRIPZ has improved the overall green transformation level of enterprises in the pilot areas of YREB,especially for non-heavily polluting enterprises,but has reduced the green transformation level of heavily polluting en-terprises.Mechanism analysis finds that GFRIPZ promotes the overall level of green transformation of enterprises in pilot ar-eas by enhancing fundraising capabilities,rationalizing resource allocation,and improving overall green transformation.Among them,GFRIPZ enhances the financing capacity of non-heavily polluting enterprises and advances green technologies,thereby improving the level of green transformation of enterprises.However,for heavily polluting enterprises,GFRIPZ only forces them to increase pollution and environmental protection expenditures,but does not alleviate their financing difficulties,causing them to fall into a low-level transformation trap of"making ends meet"and leading to a decrease in the level of green transformation of enterprises.Further analysis reveals that GFRIPZ has asymmetric spillover effects on the green transforma-tion of enterprises between industries,with positive spillover effects on the green transformation of non-heavily polluting en-terprises and negative spillover effects on the green transformation of heavily polluting enterprises.The possible marginal contributions of this paper are as follows.On the one hand,this paper enriches the research on en-vironmental regulation in micro-enterprises.As a special type of environmental regulation,scholars have different opinions on whether green finance reduces corporate efficiency or promotes corporate development.In addition,scholars often limit their analysis to a single tool,such as green bonds and green credit,and conduct less research on the micro-effects of compre-hensive policies such as GFRIPZ.On the other hand,a large amount of research has focused on the local impact of green fi-nance on the green innovation of enterprises in a single dimension,lacking a systematic examination of the green transforma-tion of enterprises.Therefore,this paper supplements the micro-evidence of green finance on the green transformation of en-terprises based on existing research,and further conducts differentiated research on the green transformation of different types of enterprises and their corresponding implementation mechanisms from an asymmetric perspective,thus providing new an-swers to the above questions.
Green FinanceGreen Transformation of EnterprisesHeavily Polluting EnterprisesNon-heavily Polluting Enter-prises
万方数据
维普
