Corporate green bonds and carbon performance: An economic input–output life cycle assessment model‐based analysis
利用中国绿色债券数据，研究发现企业发行绿色债券后并未有效改善碳绩效，主要动机是缓解融资约束，而环境规制能起到正向调节作用。
Abstract Using a proprietary database of corporate green bonds issued in China, we investigate the effect of green bond issuance on firm‐level carbon performance and its impact mechanism. We utilize the Economic Input–Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO‐LCA) to evaluate corporate carbon performance and use all the 1074 firms that issued corporate bonds in 2009–2018 as the sample group. The empirical results reveal that the companies did not effectively achieve the expected carbon performance improvement post‐issuance. The mechanism analysis suggests that this might have been because the primary motivation for the companies to issue green bonds is to ease their financial constraints. Environmental regulations (at the national and industrial level) play a positive role in the relations between corporate green bond issuance and carbon performance. Overall, the findings raise an alert on the value of Chinese corporate green bonds in climate change mitigation and indicate the need for information disclosure and carbon performance‐linked supervision on green bond issuers.