Enterprise carbon emission reduction effects of the green loan interest subsidy policy: Evidence of city-level spatial spillovers

The success of the Green Loan Interest Subsidies (GLS) Policy in promoting low-carbon development in firms is crucial for the green transformation of the economy. Using panel data from China's A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2022, this research takes the GLS Policy as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a double machine learning (DML) model to analyze its influence on corporate carbon emissions empirically. The results suggest that the GLS Policy is associated with a reduction in corporate carbon emissions, with a more pronounced effect in state-owned and labor-intensive enterprises. Robustness tests confirm the reliability of these findings. The GLS Policy promotes carbon reduction by improving bank loan supply and risk assessment capacities. At the urban level, the GLS Policy is associated with decreased local carbon emissions and may also have spillover effects on neighboring areas. These findings provide empirical insights that could inform the design of green finance policies to encourage low-carbon growth.