The Influence Of Green Credit On Debt Financing

The government proposed in the 14th-Five-Year Plan to promote the construction of China’s ecological civilization,promote the high level of ecological environment and high-quality economic development,continue to fight the battle of pollution prevention and control,and align with the goal of beautiful China in 2035.Give full play to the role of financial means of resource allocation,vigorously develop green credit,support the development of green industries,the transformation and upgrading of polluting industries,to achieve accurate,scientific and legal pollution control.By the end of 2020,China’s green credit was nearly 12 trillion yuan,and the overall quality of green financial assets was good.Although the total amount of green credit in China is rising and the policy is beginning to bear fruit,the proportion of green credit is still very low,with the green credit balance accounting for only about 10%of the total domestic credit balance in China.Commercial banks,as profitable financial institutions,may have low motivation and insufficient kinetic energy,and the"high-carbon" loan customer structure still persists.Heavy polluters may turn to private financing,shadow banks,P2P and other financing channels to circumvent policy restrictions in the face of policy pressure.The construction of green credit system has a long way to go,and the effect of green credit policy has yet to be considered.At present,domestic and foreign scholars’ research on green credit mainly focuses on theoretical research and macroscopic research,but lacks research at the micro level;research on corporate financing cost is mostly limited to the perspective of company financial information and company operation,and there are fewer studies from the perspective of external institutional environment.After the implementation of green credit policy,does it give full play to its policy influence?Does it have a significant impact on the financing of heavily polluting enterprises?Does the impact on the nature of property rights differ for different enterprises?These questions are still unclear.Therefore,this thesis examines the implementation effect of China’s green credit policy and its impact from the perspective of micro enterprises.Taking the 2012 Green Credit Guidelines.On the one hand,after the promulgation of the Guidelines,banks and other financial institutions restricted the development of high energy-consuming and high-polluting enterprises by raising credit thresholds,increasing loan interest rates,and strengthening financing constraints and other credit leverage;on the other hand,after the Guidelines were issued,the original advantages of heavily polluting enterprises no longer existed,and they were replaced by strict control by government departments.After receiving the signal,the financial market will try to avoid issuing credit financing to the heavy polluting enterprises.On the effect of green credit policy,this thesis puts forward the hypothesis that green credit policy will make the financing scale of heavy polluting enterprises decrease and financing cost increase.Using A-share listed companies in China from 2006 to 2019 as the original sample,the emission indexes of various pollutants are linearly standardized,and on this basis,the pollution emission intensity quartiles of industries are calculated(γi=0.21),and enterprises in industries with higher emission intensity are classified as heavy polluters(experimental group)and those with lower emission intensity are classified as non-heavy polluters(control group).A double difference model(DID)was used to study the effect of green credit policy on the financing level of heavy polluting enterprises,and further explored the differences in the effect of green credit policy on debt financing of enterprises with different property rights(state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises).The study finds that:(1)short-term debt financing and long-term debt financing of heavy polluting enterprises are significantly reduced after the promulgation of the Guidelines.(2)In terms of debt financing cost:Green credit policy significantly increased the debt financing cost of heavy polluters.(3)For enterprises with different property rights,the green credit policy has a more significant impact on short-term debt financing and debt financing costs of non-state enterprises.This study explores the impact of green credit policy on the micro-environment of enterprises and enriches the research on the relationship between meso-environmental policies and enterprises’ micro-behavior.It helps to fill the research gaps on the role of green credit at the level of enterprise financing and the asymmetric impact of green credit on enterprises with heterogeneous property rights,and enriches the research on the factors influencing enterprise financing in China.