绿色产业政策能与资本市场有效“联动”吗——来自绿色工厂评定的证据

Can Green Industrial Policy Form Effective Linkage with the Capital Market——Evidence from Green Factory Identification

绿色产业政策能够得到资本市场的联动响应是其政策有效性的重要体现。本文以2016年工业和信息化部出台的绿色工厂评定政策为研究对象,基于2017—2020年上市企业数据,系统检验这一绿色产业政策的股价效应及其内在机制。研究发现:获评绿色工厂显著提升了企业股价,说明中国资本市场以往对企业绿色信号多呈消极反应的状况已发生转变,资本市场能够与绿色产业政策形成有效联动,共同促进传统制造业绿色转型。异质性分析表明,获评绿色工厂对小企业的股价提升作用更强,对高污染行业企业的股价提升作用弱于清洁行业中的企业。机制分析显示,股价上涨主要源于投资者对企业获评后所能得到的现金补贴、政企关系改善等政府收益的高预期,并非源自投资者的绿色偏好和对企业产品销售增长、融资能力提升等市场收益的高预期。进一步检验发现,绿色工厂评定显著降低了获评企业竞争对手的股价,有助于倒逼未获评企业绿色转型。本文为判断绿色信号在中国资本市场上的有效性提供可靠证据,从资本市场反应这一新的视角为政府评估和改进绿色产业政策的作用效果提供了可供参考的思路。

The conflict between economic growth and environmental protection is becoming increasingly prominent.As a result,green industrial policy,as a combination of traditional industrial policy and environmental policy,has attracted tremendous attention from policymakers around the world.Similar to traditional industrial policy,the target firms of green industrial policy can receive a series of government support such as special funds and preferential procurement.However,implementing production activities in line with higher-than-normal environmental standards is a costly long-term process which cannot be made up only by one-time transfer payments and other short-term policy incentives.As an important place for market resource allocation,if the capital market can also reward firms in the form of rising stock prices,it will undoubtedly improve the incentive effect of green industrial policy.Therefore,taking the green factory identification(GFI)initiated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2016 as an example,this study conducts detailed analyses of the possible impacts of GFI on firm stock prices.Specifically,by analyzing the decision drivers of investors in the capital market and the main characteristics of GFI,this study demonstrates that the policy could affect firm stock prices as signals of high environmental performance,high compliance cost,high government income,and high market income.Further,due to the existence of firm heterogeneity,the differences in firm size,industrial pollution level,and intensity of environmental regulation in cities may lead to distinct policy effects.Based on the data of recognized listed firms during 2017—2020,this study systematically examines the stock price effect of GFI and its internal mechanisms.The empirical result of event studies shows that GFI improves firm stock prices significantly,indicating that the negative reaction of China’s capital market to firms’green signals in the past has shifted.The capital market can form effective linkage with green industrial policy to promote the green transformation of the traditional manufacturing industry.Furthermore,the heterogeneity analyses show that GFI has a stronger effect on the stock prices of small firms,but the effect on the stock prices of firms in high-pollution industries is weaker than that of firms in clean industries,which is contrary to the policy goal of promoting the green transformation of high-pollution industries.Moreover,the intensity of environmental regulation in the city where the firm is located has no significant positive moderating effect.In terms of mechanism analyses,this study reveals that the positive effect of GFI on firm stock prices mainly comes from investors’high expectations of government income such as cash subsidies and the improvement of government-enterprise relationship,rather than from investors’green preference and high expectations of market income such as sales growth and financing ability improvement.At last,further investigation indicates that GFI significantly reduces the stock prices of benchmark firms’competitors,which could help force the green upgrading of non-benchmark firms.In light of the above conclusions,it is recommended that governments should strengthen the signal function of green industrial policy to further amplify the promoting effect of policies on firm green transformation.Additionally,governments should focus on improving the market conditions in which green industry policy plays its role by raising public awareness of environmental protection and investor trust in firms’green signals.Since the cost of green production varies naturally among different industries,governments also need to increase the technical support for green industry policy according to their unique characteristics.Overall,this study provides new and reliable evidence for estimating the effectiveness of green signals in China’s capital market and provides a reference for governments to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of green industrial policy from the new perspective of capital market reaction.