Research On The Impact Of Central Bank Collateral Expansion On Enterprise Green Innovation

In September 2020,China clearly put forward the goal of achieving "carbon peak" by 2030 and "carbon neutral" by 2060,and the development of green economy has been elevated to a national strategic level.Enterprises are the main force behind the development of a green economy in China,and their investment in innovation has a direct impact on the prosperity of green industries.However,green projects are characterized by high investment and high sunk costs,and enterprises investing in green projects have always had difficulties in financing and expensive financing,with the funding gap being the biggest problem in developing a green economy.In order to regulate the allocation of credit resources and promote the upgrading of industrial structure,in June 2018,the People’s Bank of China announced the expansion of the scope of collateral for medium-term lending facilities(MLF)by adding assets such as green bonds and green loans,and accepting them as collateral on a priority basis,conveying the policy intention of the monetary authorities to guide more funds to the green economy.Against this background,this paper focuses on the green economy sector and sets the central bank’s current operation of including green credit assets as eligible collateral as a policy dummy variable to explore whether monetary policy with green financial elements can have the desired effect.Combining relevant literature from home and abroad,this paper selects A-share listed enterprises as a sample to construct panel data.The policy-influenced enterprises and non-policy-influenced enterprises were screened out according to the green credit keywords compiled in the "Green Credit Statistical Form",and served as the treatment and control groups respectively.A propensity score matching-double difference(PSM-DID)model with two-way fixed effects was used to investigate the effect of the central bank’s collateral expansion policy on the level of green innovation of the characteristic firms.The empirical results are also tested for robustness by selecting placebo tests,excluding other policy confounders and replacing propensity score matching.In addition,the impact mechanism of the expansion policy is further explored and the cost of corporate debt financing is selected as a mediating variable to test the mediating effect.Finally,the heterogeneity of the policy effect is analyzed by considering regional financial development levels and differences in firm ownership.Based on the empirical analysis,this paper concludes that: firstly,the implementation of the central bank’s collateral expansion policy has significantly increased the level of green innovation of policy-influenced enterprises;secondly,from the analysis of the impact mechanism,the expansion policy enhances the level of green innovation of policy-influenced enterprises by reducing the cost of corporate debt financing,and the cost of corporate debt financing plays part of the intermediary effect;thirdly,from the analysis of the heterogeneity perspective,the policy-influenced enterprises located in regions with a lower level of financial development and state-owned system have a more significant promotion effect of the expansion policy on their level of green innovation.This paper explores the effectiveness of the implementation of the central bank’s collateral expansion policy from the perspective of policy influencing the level of green innovation of enterprises,which not only enriches the research on the micro-economic consequences of green financial policy and structural monetary policy,but also provides reference suggestions on how the monetary authority can effectively play its central bank function to further promote the development of green credit and support the green upgrading of non-state enterprises under the concept of green development in China,as well as how the government can effectively play its own incentive guidance role to balance the economic development among regions.