Debt maturity and firms’ environmental behavior: Evidence from the establishment of city commercial banks in China

IF 3.4 3区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Journal of Asian Economics Pub Date : 2025-10-16 DOI:10.1016/j.asieco.2025.102062

Xi Peng , Yanhong Li , Runcheng Jin , Guangjun Shen

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Abstract

This study investigates the impact of debt maturity on firms’ environmental behavior by matching data from the Chinese Annual Survey of Industrial Firms and the Environmental Survey and Reporting database. We employ the staggered difference-in-differences approach by exploiting the establishment of city commercial banks (CCBs) in China as a natural experiment. The results reveal that the establishment of CCBs reduced the emission intensity of industrial wastewater and waste gas by 8.3 % and 18.0 %, respectively. Mechanism analysis indicates that the CCBs intensified competition in the banking sector and increased the share of long-term debt in firms’ total debt, which facilitated investments in wastewater and waste gas treatment equipment. These findings underscore the critical role of financial development in environmental protection, as the shift from polluting to cleaner production requires financial support, particularly long-term financing, for the upgrade of production technology and/or production equipment.

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债务期限与企业环境行为：来自中国城市商业银行设立的证据

本文通过对《中国工业企业年度调查》和《环境调查与报告》数据库数据的匹配，研究了债务期限对企业环境行为的影响。我们将中国城市商业银行的建立作为一种自然实验，采用了交错差分方法。结果表明，建厂的建立使工业废水和废气的排放强度分别降低了8.3 %和18.0 %。机制分析表明，建设银行加剧了银行业的竞争，增加了长期债务在企业总债务中的份额，这促进了对废水和废气处理设备的投资。这些调查结果强调了金融发展在环境保护方面的关键作用，因为从污染生产转向清洁生产需要财政支持，特别是长期融资，以提高生产技术和（或）生产设备。

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

Journal of Asian Economics ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

4.70

自引率

9.40%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Asian Economics provides a forum for publication of increasingly growing research in Asian economic studies and a unique forum for continental Asian economic studies with focus on (i) special studies in adaptive innovation paradigms in Asian economic regimes, (ii) studies relative to unique dimensions of Asian economic development paradigm, as they are investigated by researchers, (iii) comparative studies of development paradigms in other developing continents, Latin America and Africa, (iv) the emerging new pattern of comparative advantages between Asian countries and the United States and North America.