The scope of green finance research: Research streams, influential works and future research paths

Green finance, which includes climate finance, is a highly relevant issue for climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as for the transition to a renewable and sustainable energy economy. However, it constitutes a diverse and multi-layered field whose contents and interrelationships are not easily tangible and which lacks a widely accepted definition. Using quantitative bibliometric methods, this article analyzes a dataset of 942 peer-reviewed articles on green finance and their 37,255 references. It provides a structured and objective overview of the nine main research streams, their prevalence over time, high-impact publications, and the degree of information exchange between them. The main streams of green finance research address different levels of analysis, focus on a range of topics from several scientific fields, and arguably evidence little intellectual exchange. Based on the findings, it is suggested how future research on green finance can coalesce across disciplines to increase its productivity and efficiency.