碳中和表现能改善企业投资效率吗?

Could Carbon Neutrality Performance Improve Firms Investment Efficiency?

绿色低碳战略愿景下,碳中和管理是关系全球气候变化风险应对与经济社会可持续发展的重大议题,但少有文献从实证研究角度探究微观企业碳中和进程的经济效益。以2019—2022年我国沪深A股上市公司及华证碳中和评级为样本,实证考察碳中和表现对企业投资效率的有效性。研究发现:良好的碳中和表现具有投资激励作用,其能够改善企业投资效率。影响机制分析表明,碳中和表现优势能够发挥信息促进效应、代理成本缓释效应和融资约束缓释效应,以此积极影响企业投资效率。异质性检验发现,碳中和表现对投资效率的积极影响在高碳行业、数字化程度较高和市场监督环境较差的企业中更明显。在碳中和评级监管的外部性方面,碳中和表现赋能的投资效率促进作用具有行业溢出效应。

Under the strategies vision of green and low-carbon,carbon neutrality management becomes an important issue related to addressing global climate change risk and sustainable development of economic and social.Taking Chinese A-share listed firms from 2019 to 2022 and Huazheng carbon neutrality ratings as the research samples,this paper explores the impact of carbon neutrality performance on firms investment efficiency.First,the empirical result shows that good carbon neutrality performance has an investment incentive effect and can effectively improve firms investment efficiency.The influence mechanism shows that carbon neutrality performance can play a role in information promotion effect,agency problem mitigation effect and finance constraint mitigation effect,thereby positively promoting the investment efficiency.Second,the cross-sectional tests show that the positive effect of carbon neutrality on investment efficiency is more pronounced in high carbon industry scenarios,the firms with high levels of digitization and poor market supervision environment.Finally,from the externalities of carbon neutrality rating regulation,the improvement of investment efficiency empowered by carbon neutrality performance has a significant spillover effect in the same industry.