What’s in a shade? The market relevance of green bonds’ external reviews

IF 8 3区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

British Accounting Review Pub Date : 2025-09-01 Epub Date: 2023-10-28 DOI:10.1016/j.bar.2023.101271

Marco Ghitti , Gianfranco Gianfrate , Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes , Marco Spinelli

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

With the growth of green bonds as an asset class, the certification of the actual climate footprint of projects financed with these bonds is gaining momentum among investors and policymakers. We investigate the informative content of Second Party Opinions (SPOs) issued by external reviewers who assess the quality of green bonds by collecting a global sample of over 1200 corporate green bonds and analyzing matching results for 336 of them. We show that the market assigns a premium to the green bonds with the best SPOs' valuation - namely, the “dark-” and “medium-” green bonds. However, in presence of a formal credit rating, SPO external reviews do not appear to incorporate distinctive information priced by the market. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that stricter green investment regulations, like the adoption of the “EU Taxonomy,” produce a “fly-to-quality” effect that widens the spread between dark and lighter green bonds' returns. Responsible investors also appear to rely on the judgement of external reviewers when a formal credit rating is absent, and they have significantly higher stakes in the greener bonds. Overall, our results indicate that SPO external reviews can reduce information asymmetry between issuers and investors absent of a credit rating, but they are not informative for rated green bonds.

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阴影里有什么？绿色债券外部评价的市场相关性

随着绿色债券作为一种资产类别的增长，对这些债券融资项目的实际气候足迹进行认证的势头在投资者和政策制定者中越来越大。我们通过收集全球1200多家公司绿色债券样本并分析其中336家公司的匹配结果，调查了评估绿色债券质量的外部评审者发布的第二方意见（spo）的信息内容。我们发现，市场将溢价分配给具有最佳spo估值的绿色债券-即“暗”和“中”绿色债券。然而，在存在正式信用评级的情况下，SPO外部审查似乎没有纳入由市场定价的独特信息。采用“差中差”方法，我们发现更严格的绿色投资法规，如采用“欧盟分类”，产生了“飞向优质”效应，扩大了深色和浅色绿色债券回报之间的差距。在没有正式信用评级的情况下，负责任的投资者似乎也会依赖外部评估者的判断，而且他们在绿色债券中的利害关系要高得多。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，SPO外部审查可以减少缺乏信用评级的发行人与投资者之间的信息不对称，但对于已评级的绿色债券，它们没有提供信息。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

British Accounting Review BUSINESS, FINANCE-

CiteScore

8.60

自引率

3.90%

发文量

审稿时长

76 days

期刊介绍： The British Accounting Review*is pleased to publish original scholarly papers across the whole spectrum of accounting and finance. The journal is eclectic and pluralistic and contributions are welcomed across a wide range of research methodologies (e.g. analytical, archival, experimental, survey and qualitative case methods) and topics (e.g. financial accounting, management accounting, finance and financial management, auditing, public sector accounting, social and environmental accounting; accounting education and accounting history), evidence from UK and non-UK sources are equally acceptable.