Article

The role of financing constraints and environmental policy on green investment

Helia Costa, Lilas Demmou, Guido Franco, and Stefan Lamp

Abstract

Despite ambitious carbon reduction targets set by policymakers worldwide, current investments fall well short of the net-zero emissions scenario. This paper investigates the impact of financing constraints (FCs) on green investment among large, publicly listed firms across diverse sectors and countries. We find that FCs significantly reduce the propensity to undertake green investments by 2.5 percentage points. This result is even more pronounced in a difference-in-differences framework when focusing on the exogenous increase in financing costs resulting from the Great Financial Crisis of 2007/08. The study reveals further that the negative impact of FCs can be reduced by market-based environmental policies.

Keywords

Green investment; Financing constraints; CO2 emissions; Environmental policy stringency;

Reference

Helia Costa, Lilas Demmou, Guido Franco, and Stefan Lamp, The role of financing constraints and environmental policy on green investment, Economics Letters, vol. 239, n. 111741, June 2024.

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Published in

Economics Letters, vol. 239, n. 111741, June 2024