Research On The Impact Of Green Credit Policy On The Debt Financing Of Heavy Pollution Enterprises

Since the implementation of the reform and opening policy,industrialization and urbanization have also accelerated,and China’s economy has achieved rapid growth,but at the same time,it has also caused severe ecological and environmental problems.In the context of the new era,how to achieve high-quality economic development without destroying the ecological environment has become a current hot issue,and it is also an urgent issue to be solved.In the government work report of the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly pointed out that to adhere to the harmonious coexistence of man and nature,we must firmly establish and practice the concept of "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains",adhere to the basic national policy of resource conservation and environmental protection The concept of "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains" highlights the government’s emphasis on the ecological environment.As the main manufacturer of environmental pollution problems-heavy polluting enterprises,more and more production and operation activities have received extensive attention from the government and society.As a result,the government has formulated a series of policies and tried to adopt financial means to promote ecological and environmental protection,strengthen the governance of pollution problems,and promote the sustainable and healthy development of the economy and society.First of all,in July 2007,the government promulgated the "Opinions on Implementing Environmental Protection Policies and Regulations to Prevent Credit Risks".The promulgation of this policy marked the start of the government’s use of "green credit" as a financial means to control environmental pollution.Subsequently,in December 2012,the China Banking Regulatory Commission issued the "Green Credit Guidelines",which clearly stipulated the credit allocation,management and assessment of financial institutions.This is the first domestic regulatory document specifically targeting green credit.This document mainly imposes stricter restrictions on the financing of heavy-polluting enterprises,adopting high interest rates and high thresholds to restrict the development of heavy-polluting enterprises,so as to guide heavy-polluting enterprises to transform their production and development methods,carry out industrial transformation and upgrading,and become a green industry.development of.Then,after the implementation of the "Green Credit Guidelines," financial institutions at all levels,represented by banks,while taking into account their own development interests,will they carefully review the environmental protection status of enterprises and limit the debt financing of heavily polluting enterprises in their credit work? ? In addition,how will the heterogeneity of Chinese enterprises’ property rights,regionality,and level of rule of law affect the implementation of this policy? This article focuses on these aspects,trying to analyze the net effect of the green credit policy on the debt financing behavior of heavily polluting enterprises,so as to enrich the relevant research in the field of green credit.Based on the existing research of domestic and foreign scholars,this paper selects the 2004-2019 A-share heavily polluting companies and non-heavy polluting listed companies as the investigation samples,and sets the green credit policy to be mainly implemented by the heavily polluting companies as the experimental group.As a control group,non-heavy polluting companies use propensity score matching-double difference method(PSM-DID)to empirically test the net effect of green credit policies on corporate debt financing(debt financing scale,debt financing cost).And further investigated the effect of green credit policy on corporate debt financing from the perspective of corporate heterogeneity and regional heterogeneity.In terms of enterprise heterogeneity,listed companies are divided into state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises according to the nature of ownership.In terms of regional heterogeneity,they are divided into two aspects.The differences in the level of rule of law in different regions are divided into areas with higher levels of rule of law and enterprises in areas with lower levels of rule of law.Through empirical findings:(1)After the "Green Credit Guidelines" was issued,compared with non-heavy polluting enterprises,the scale of debt financing of heavily polluting enterprises has dropped significantly,and the cost of debt financing has risen significantly.(2)Due to the difference in the nature of property rights,after the "Green Credit Guidelines" was issued,the scale of debt financing of non-state-owned heavy-polluting enterprises has dropped significantly,while the scale of debt financing of state-owned heavy-polluting enterprises has no significant effect.State-owned and non-state-owned heavy-polluting enterprises The cost of debt financing of all countries has increased significantly,and non-state-owned heavy-polluting enterprises have increased even more.(3)Under different regional differences,in the regression results of samples by region,after the release of the "Green Credit Guidelines",the debt financing scale of heavy polluting enterprises in the eastern and central and western regions has decreased significantly,and the central and western regions have significantly reduced their debt financing scales.Heavy pollution companies have fallen more;in terms of debt financing costs,the debt financing costs of heavy pollution companies in the east have risen significantly,but they have no significant effect on heavy pollution companies in the central and western regions.According to the regression results of the sample by the level of rule of law by region,after the release of the "Green Credit Guidelines",the debt financing scale of heavily polluting companies with a higher level of rule of law has decreased significantly,and the cost of debt financing has risen significantly;while for the group with a lower level of rule of law Neither the scale of debt financing nor the cost of debt financing of heavily polluting companies have a significant effect.It is concluded from the above empirical evidence that the implementation of the green credit policy has a certain restraint effect on the debt financing of heavily polluting enterprises,but this restraint effect has its limitations.That is,the restraint effect produced by green credit is in the state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises,and the eastern and western regions.There are asymmetries in enterprises in the central and western regions with higher levels of rule of law and lower levels of rule of law.Finally,this article puts forward relevant policy recommendations based on the conclusions drawn.