Green links: corporate networks and environmental performance

Hossein Asgharian, Michał Dzieliński, Zahra Hashemzadeh and Lu Liu

Review of Finance, 2024, vol. 28, issue 3, 1027-1058

Abstract: We investigate the propagation of environmental performance among competitors and in customer–supplier relationships. We find a significant causal effect among competitors, while the propagation from customers to suppliers and vice versa appears insignificant or does not survive identification tests. The effect is stronger among firms in highly concentrated competitor networks and toward firms with less market and bargaining power than their competitors. We also find significantly stronger propagation of environmental performance among competitors engaged in joint research and development activity. These results show that the propagation stems from both competitive pressure and technological spillover. Importantly, we find that propagation is strong when the competitor improves its environmental performance and when the firm’s own environmental performance is poor initially, alleviating concerns that improvements in performance are concentrated among firms, which are already green. Overall, network effects among competing firms are a significant force shaping environmental performance, and a force mostly for good.

Keywords: environmental performance; carbon intensity; corporate network; competitive effect; technological spillover (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 M14 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rof/rfad042 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:revfin:v:28:y:2024:i:3:p:1027-1058.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Finance is currently edited by Marcin Kacperczyk

More articles in Review of Finance from European Finance Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().