The Impact Of Credit Rating On The Credit Spread Of Green Bonds

With the continuous advancement of China’s modernization,the "win-win" of economic development and environmental protection is particularly important,and green finance was born.As an important financial tool in green finance,green bonds have also developed rapidly in recent years.After the official launch of China’s green bond market in 2016,the market scale has been expanding,the bond issuers have become increasingly diversified,and the recognition of investors has been increasing.However,there are still some phenomena in China’s green bond market,such as information asymmetry,lack of standardized information disclosure mechanism,and some bond issuers have "green drift" behavior.As a result,investors still have concerns and lack of trust in green bond financing,resulting in a large cost of green bond financing.In addition to knowing the green bond itself and the issuing body through public information,investors can also analyze the green bond itself and the issuing body through relevant credit rating.Therefore,credit rating has become an important bridge between the issuing body of green bond and investors.With the development of credit rating,bond rating,subject rating and guarantor rating have emerged for different objects.Based on this,this paper focuses on whether these three credit ratings will eliminate investors’ concerns about green bonds and reduce the financing cost of green bonds.By comparing the relevant data containing the guarantor’s rating,it is found that most green bonds with the guarantor’s rating have low bond rating or subject rating.Therefore,this paper introduces the intermediary effect stepwise regression method to further explore whether the guarantor’s rating has an intermediary effect on the credit spread of green bonds.At the level of theoretical research,this paper analyzes the reasons for the impact of credit rating on green bond credit spread through information asymmetry theory and principal-agent theory,and combs and summarizes the previous relevant analysis.Then,the green bonds that have not yet expired in the wind database are used as samples for empirical research.The regression results show that the bond rating,subject rating and guarantor rating of green bonds can reduce the credit spread of green bonds,and the guarantor rating can not only directly affect the credit spread,but also indirectly affect the credit spread of green bonds with bond rating as an intermediary variable.On the one hand,the research results provide the issuers with the idea of increasing the guarantor’s rating and reducing the financing cost of green bonds when the bond rating is low.On the other hand,it makes investors better understand and understand the green bond market and guide investors to invest rationally.