Research On The Impact Of Capital Market Opening On Corporate ESG Performance

Since the establishment of the B-share system in 1992,our capital market has gone through a 30-year course in opening up.Our economy has now transformed to a high-quality development stage.It is an inevitable requirement for realizing sustainable economic development to further open up.At the macro level,the Shanghai & Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program has made our capital market further improve and mature,and increased the efficiency of capital circulation between the mainland and Hong Kong markets;At the micro level,the northbound institutional investors introduced by Shanghai & Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program have a better sense of information and investment concept,which can force the target companies to improve the quality of information disclosure and governance ability,and influence corporate decision-making.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the economic consequences of Shanghai & Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program deeply for the further opening of our capital market.By reviewing previous literatures and studying theories,it can be found that the existing studies on the economic consequences of capital market opening can be divided into macro level and micro level.At the micro level,capital market opening has a positive impact on corporate environmental protection,social responsibility and corporate governance ability,but there are few literatures on the overall relationship between capital market opening and corporate ESG performance.Therefore,based on the quasi-natural experiment of the Shanghai & Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program,this paper builds a differential model to study the impact of capital market opening on corporate ESG performance,and draws the following conclusions:(1)Capital market opening plays a significant positive role in improving corporate ESG performance.(2)In the samples of state-owned enterprises,non-polluting enterprises and highly competitive enterprises,capital market opening has a more significant positive effect on corporate ESG.(3)The opening of the capital market improves the ESG performance of the company by reducing the agency cost of the company,and the agency cost plays a part of the intermediary role.(4)After PSM-DID test,placebo test and changing the time window,a unanimous conclusion was reached.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following suggestions: From the perspective of the government,the capital market should be further opened under the condition of controllable risks,and the government should try its best to improve the system construction of Shanghai & Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program,expand the list of " Shanghai & Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program,and promote the construction of ESG unified standard system.From the perspective of the company,the concept of ESG should be integrated into daily business decisions,and the quality of information disclosure should be improved,communication channels should be broadened,and information asymmetry should be reduced.The possible marginal contributions of this paper are: It widened the research perspective of influencing factors of company ESG performance from the perspective of macro policy,explored deeply the mechanism of this influence,enriched relevant research on the effect of opening policy of capital market,proved the necessity of further opening of capital market to sustainable development,for our country to strengthen the two-way opening of capital market,Promoting high-quality and sustainable economic development provides reference value.