“Green economy and sustainable development” has become the focus of contemporary world economic development. As an important part of green financial instruments, green credit has become a hot topic. This paper investigates whether the Green Credit Policy has had any impact. Does it have a binding effect on the debt financing of heavily polluting enterprises? Using the Green Credit Guidelines as the starting point for the implementation of the Green Credit Policy, this paper takes Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2004 to 2020 as the research sample, and applies the propensity score matching combined with difference-in-difference (PSM-DID) method to analyze the impact of green credit policies on the long- and short-term financing scale of heavily polluting enterprises. The study found that the implementation of the Green Credit Policy significantly suppressed the long-term financing of heavily polluting enterprises, but allowed for the expansion of short-term financing for heavily polluting enterprises. Compared with the state-owned enterprises, the Green Credit Policy has a more significant impact on non-state-owned enterprises in terms of suppressing long-term financing and increasing short-term financing, suggesting that the Green Credit Policy is affected by the “credit discrimination” of non-state-owned enterprises. Therefore, the Green Credit Policy still needs to be improved. This study provides empirical evidence of the effectiveness of green credit policies in China, and offers suggestions for further green credit policies in the future.

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Based on the staggered difference-in-difference (DID) model, this paper uses Chinese listed firms between 2012 and 2020 to investigate the impact of green bond issuance on corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. We provide evidence that green bond issuance positively enhances corporate ESG performance. Green bond issuance mainly promotes corporate ESG performance through the internal attention effect and the external supervision effect. Moreover, the positive correlation between green bond issuance and corporate ESG performance is more prominent among companies with larger size, higher government subsidies and executives with environmental experience. The extended analysis shows that green bond issuance can promote the enhancement of firm valuation. This study provides theoretical guidance for the use of green financial systems to promote corporate ESG performance.

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