Do Scope 3 Carbon Emissions Impact Firms’ Cost of Debt?
研究发现披露范围三碳排放的企业平均债务成本降低20个基点，但市场并未显著惩罚其排放量，反而更关注范围一和二的排放，这可能源于数据不成熟或漂绿行为。
Do firms that report more carbon emissions—particularly scope 3 emissions—face a higher cost of borrowing in credit markets? In this article, the authors find that firms that disclose scope 3 emissions face a lower cost of borrowing in credit markets and estimate a <italic>scope 3 disclosure premium</italic> of −20 basis points on average. However, credit markets do not significantly discriminate the quantitative amount of reported scope 3 emissions despite penalizing scope 1 + 2 carbon generation. Is this trend because markets reward advertised rather than actual pollution reduction efforts—greenwashing—or because scope 3 data are not yet mature enough to provide reliable information? While the literature has documented evidence of investors rewarding greenwashing, the authors find substantial discrepancies in firms’ scope 3 disclosures across time, regions, and sectors. They show that these discrepancies are mainly concentrated in downstream data. Based on these findings, they highlight possible areas of engagement between firms and investors or policymakers that would be beneficial to all stakeholders.