绿色信贷政策如何影响重污染企业技术创新?

How Does the Green Credit Policy Impact on Heavy Pollution Firms’Technological Innovation?

完善绿色信贷等绿色金融政策框架和激励机制,对于推动经济绿色发展、实现碳达峰碳中和目标至关重要。本文以《绿色信贷指引》(简称《指引》)的出台为准自然实验,以2009—2018年A股上市公司的数据为样本,运用双重差分法考察绿色信贷对重污染企业技术创新的影响。实证结果显示,《指引》出台后,与其他行业企业相比,重污染企业的技术创新产出显著降低。机制检验显示,《指引》通过降低重污染企业的研发投入,进而抑制了企业的技术创新,未能发挥"波特效应"。此外,政策引致的信贷约束效应与信息传递效应减少了重污染企业可获得的信贷资源与商业信用,导致技术创新水平下降。进一步分析表明,《指引》对重污染企业创新能力的作用表现出明显的异质性:与国有企业相比,非国有企业受政策影响更显著;与东部地区相比,这种抑制作用在中西部地区的重污染企业中表现的更明显;与弱融资约束企业相比,强融资约束企业受政策影响更显著。以上基于中国经济实践的证据,对于完善绿色信贷政策的资源配置作用、促进低碳经济发展具有一定的借鉴意义。

In 2021,the People’s Bank of China called for“implementing the major decision-making and deployment of carbon peak and carbon neutrality,improving the policy framework and incentive mechanism of green finance”,indicating that green finance is an important path to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality.“Green credit guidelines”requires financial institutions to take energy conservation,emission reduction,environmental protection and other factors as an important basis for credit decision-making,increase credit support for pollution control and resource conservation projects.Industrial enterprises are the suppliers of most material products,but they are also the main producers of pollution.In China’s current economic situation,some traditional heavy industries are still an important part of the national economy.Simply closing many heavily polluting enterprises may lead to a setback in industrial development and a large number of unemployment,which is not conducive to local economy.The policy is not to shut down heavy polluting enterprises,but to force enterprises to carry out technological innovation and realize transformation and upgrading through credit constraints.As an exogenous force,whether the policy can encourage and guide heavy polluting enterprises to embark on the road of technological innovation is rather important.Taking the implementation of“Green Credit Guidelines”as a quasi-natural experiment,this paper uses DID method to study the internal mechanism of green credit affecting heavily polluting enterprises’technological innovation based on the data of A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2018.The results show that,compared with other industries,patent output of heavily polluting firms are significantly decreased after the implementation of policy.The mechanism test shows that the guidelines indirectly affect the technological innovation of heavily polluting enterprises by reducing R&D investment,bank loans and commercial credit.We further examine the different effect of policy on heterogenous ownership property,different regions and financial constraints levels.The results show that non-SOEs,firm in central and western regions&enterprises with high financial constraints are more sensitive to green credit policy.The research may have the following marginal contributions.First,this paper enriches the research on the economic consequences of environmental economic policy.At present,many literatures have discussed the implementation effect of green credit from the aspects of enterprise investment and financing,but there are few studies on the technological innovation,and the conclusions of some studies are contrary.Second,it reveals the mechanism of green credit inhibiting technological innovation of heavily polluting enterprises.In theory,this paper discusses that green credit affects technological innovation through crowding out R&D investment of polluting enterprises by following the cost effect,forming credit constraint effect and information transmission effect.Also it carries out rigorous empirical test at the same time,which provides new evidence for understanding the relationship between green credit policy and enterprise innovation.Third,from the perspective of enterprise heterogeneity,this paper finds that the implementation effect of green credit policy at the micro level will be affected by enterprises’ownership property,region and its own capital situation,which will help to provide a theoretical reference for understanding the difference of policy implementation effect and improving the green financial system.Based on the above findings,this paper has several policy implications.Firstly,government departments should continue to improve the green credit policy system.Further establish a mandatory environmental information disclosure mechanism,improve the financial incentive system for green and low-carbon investment and financing;Secondly,as the main force of green credit policy implementation,financial institutions need to formulate operational systems.Strengthen the exchange of information with environmental departments,use professional third-party environmental risk assessment agencies to provide credit to those enterprises that really have capital needs;Finally,heavily polluting enterprises should promote the transformation and upgrading of their own operations and management.In the background of carbon neutrality,companies should aim to unify social responsibility and economic benefits,transform from traditional management to green and low-carbon management.Focus on environmental risks in operation and invest credit funds in green technology innovation.