绿色金融推动企业绿色化转型的成效、局限与政策优化:来自长江经济带的证据

Effectiveness,Limitations,and Policy Optimization of Green Finance in Promoting the Green Transformation of Enterprises:Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt

作为中国最重要的绿色金融政策之一,绿色金融改革创新试验区对推动长江经济带高质量绿色转型意义重大。文章以2008—2021年长江经济带沪深A股上市企业为样本,运用双重差分模型,考察绿色金融改革创新试验区对企业绿色转型的影响。结果表明,试点政策提升了长江经济带试点地区整体企业绿色转型水平,尤其提升了非重污染企业绿色转型水平,但降低了重污染企业绿色转型水平。机制分析发现,试点政策通过增强筹资能力,合理化资源配置,促进试验区整体企业绿色转型水平的提升。其中,试点政策通过提高非重污染企业的融资能力和绿色技术创新,提升了企业绿色转型水平。但对重污染企业而言,试点政策仅倒逼其增加污染环保支出,却并未缓解其融资困境,使其陷入“入不敷出”的低水平转型陷阱,引致企业绿色转型水平的降低。进一步的同群效应分析发现,试点政策存在行业间企业绿色转型的非对称溢出效应,非重污染企业绿色转型存在正向溢出效应,而重污染企业绿色转型存在负向溢出效应。研究对进一步完善绿色金融改革创新试验区政策、促进不同类型企业绿色转型提出了可行建议。

As micro entities of economic development and environmental protection,green transformation is an important strategy for enterprises to gain sustainable competitive advantages under environmental pressure.Considering the characteristics of output uncertainty and long cycle of green transformation,it is difficult for enterprises to spontaneously carry out green transformation.Green finance combines economic and ecological benefits,and can guide the transfer of credit resources from high-energy consuming and high-polluting sectors to low-energy consuming and environmentally friendly sectors,thereby achieving effective allocation of funds in green industries.Among them,the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone(GFRIPZ)is one of the most important green finance policies in China.However,after 7 years of implementation,it is still unknown whether GFRIPZ can be precise and effective in promoting green transformation for different types of enterprises.Therefore,this paper takes the Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in the Yangtze River Economic Belt(YREB)from 2008 to 2021 as samples,and uses a difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of GFRIPZ on the green transformation of enterprises.The results indicate that GFRIPZ has improved the overall green transformation level of enterprises in the pilot areas of YREB,especially for non-heavily polluting enterprises,but has reduced the green transformation level of heavily polluting enterprises.Mechanism analysis finds that GFRIPZ promotes the overall level of green transformation of enterprises in pilot areas by enhancing fundraising capabilities,rationalizing resource allocation,and improving overall green transformation.Among them,GFRIPZ enhances the financing capacity of non-heavily polluting enterprises and advances green technologies,thereby improving the level of green transformation of enterprises.However,for heavily polluting enterprises,GFRIPZ only forces them to increase pollution and environmental protection expenditures,but does not alleviate their financing difficulties,causing them to fall into a low-level transformation trap of"making ends meet"and leading to a decrease in the level of green transformation of enterprises.Further analysis reveals that GFRIPZ has asymmetric spillover effects on the green transformation of enterprises between industries,with positive spillover effects on the green transformation of non-heavily polluting enterprises and negative spillover effects on the green transformation of heavily polluting enterprises.The possible marginal contributions of this paper are as follows.On the one hand,this paper enriches the research on environmental regulation in micro-enterprises.As a special type of environmental regulation,scholars have different opinions on whether green finance reduces corporate efficiency or promotes corporate development.In addition,scholars often limit their analysis to a single tool,such as green bonds and green credit,and conduct less research on the micro-effects of comprehensive policies such as GFRIPZ.On the other hand,a large amount of research has focused on the local impact of green finance on the green innovation of enterprises in a single dimension,lacking a systematic examination of the green transformation of enterprises.Therefore,this paper supplements the micro-evidence of green finance on the green transformation of enterprises based on existing research,and further conducts differentiated research on the green transformation of different types of enterprises and their corresponding implementation mechanisms from an asymmetric perspective,thus providing new answers to the above questions.