绿色债券与企业技术创新

Green Bonds and Corporate Technological Innovation

在探索经济与环境双赢的道路上,环境政策的制定、实施和评估是不可缺少的内容。环境政策具有多种形式,绿色债券是中国市场引导型环境政策之一。绿色债券在中国的产生和发展呈现显著的自上而下的制度化特征,其背后隐含着政府实现经济社会可持续发展和双碳目标的决心。历经多年的发展,绿色债券的政策效果值得探究。聚焦绿色债券,讨论其债券融资和环境友好的双重属性,剖析其直接效应和溢出效应的形成,并从企业技术创新角度探讨绿色债券的政策效果。以2016年至2019年非金融类企业信用债券发行人为主要样本,采用实证分析方法,检验绿色债券是否以及如何影响企业技术创新。研究结果表明,企业发行绿色债券后,可通过直接效应和溢出效应促进企业的绿色技术创新和非绿色技术创新。进一步,当债券发行人所处地区的环境治理力度较大、金融市场化指数较高时,企业发行绿色债券促进其技术创新的效果更显著;当企业在发行债券之前的外部融资需求越强时,企业发行绿色债券对其技术创新的促进作用更明显。基于绿色债券的视角拓展了市场引导型环境政策的研究框架,补充了企业环境行为后果研究的微观证据,为绿色债券市场相关主体提供决策依据,对完善绿色债券相关制度以及构建市场引导型环境政策的实施和评估体系提供建议。

On the path of exploring a win-win situation for the economy and the environment, the formulation, implementation,and evaluation of environmental policies are indispensable. Environmental policies take many forms, among which green bond is one of the market-oriented environmental policies in China. The emergence and development of green bonds in China have obvious top-down institutionalized characteristics, reflecting the government′s determination to achieve sustainable economic and social development and dual-carbon goals. After years of development, whether the policy of green bonds is effective is worth exploring.This study focuses on green bonds, discusses its dual attributes of “bond financing” and “environmental friendliness”,analyzes the formation of their direct effects and spillover effects, and discusses the policy effects of green bonds from the perspective of corporate technological innovation. This study takes non-financial corporate credit bond issuers from 2016 to 2019as main samples and empirically tests whether and how green bonds affect the technological innovation level of enterprises.The findings show that green bond insurance can promote a bond issuer′s green innovation level and non-green innovation level through both direct effects and spillover effects. This study also finds that the above-mentioned effect is more pronounced when the bond issuer is located in a region with better environmental governance or a higher financial marketization index, and when the external financing demand of enterprises before issuing bonds is stronger, the promotion effect of issuing green bonds on their technological innovation level is more obvious.From the perspective of green bonds, this study expands the research framework of market-guided environmental policies,supplements the micro-evidence on the consequences of corporate environmental behavior, provides a decision-making basis for relevant players in the green bond market, and offers suggestions for improving the relevant system of green bonds and constructing the implementation and evaluation system of market-oriented environmental policies.