Stock Market Liberalization and Corporate Green Innovation: Evidence from China

Yuming Zhang, Juanjuan Zhang and Zhang Cheng
Additional contact information
Yuming Zhang: School of Management, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China
Juanjuan Zhang: School of Management, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China
Zhang Cheng: The Center for Economic Research, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 7, 1-22

Abstract: Corporate green innovation is an effective way to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction. Enterprises’ willingness to pursue green innovation is increasingly affected by external factors. By using a quasi-natural experiment of China’s Stock Connect program, we investigate the impact of stock market liberalization on corporate green innovation. We find that stock market liberalization increases enterprises’ green innovation, especially for state-owned enterprises. We also find that stock market liberalization plays a stronger role in promoting the green invention patents of enterprises whose managers have overseas experience and enterprises in areas with a higher degree of openness. Our mechanism analysis suggests that stock market liberalization attracts the attention of securities analysts and increases managers’ focus on environmental protection, thereby promoting corporate green innovation. Our findings show that stock market liberalization plays an important role in the governance of firms’ non-financial behavior, which has important theoretical and practical implications.

Keywords: capital market liberalization; green innovation; Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program; Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect program (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/7/3412/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/7/3412/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:7:p:3412-:d:524116

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().