Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2020.1860800
Bank deregulation, environmental regulation and pollution reduction: evidence from Chinese firms
Yufeng Xia
Peisen Liu
Guanhua Huang
Sažetak
The Chinese government has increased its emphasis on ‘green
GDP’ and restricted bank lending to polluting firms. However, government interference may distort bank credit allocation and worsen the external financing environment of polluting firms. Bank
competition as a market-based mechanism may play a role in pollution abatement. By matching the Annual Surveys of Industrial
Firms dataset with the Ministry of Environmental Protection survey
data and the city-level bank competition data, this article explores
the effects of banking sector structure on firm-level pollution emissions under the context of bank deregulation. The findings of this
study are mainly in four aspects. First, more bank competition can
reduce pollution emissions per unit output value. Second, bank
competition affects enterprise pollution emissions through alleviating financial constraints. To be more specific, credit availability,
credit amount as well as credit cost are the channels for bank
competition to affect enterprise pollution emissions. Third, strict
environment regulation strengthens the negative effect of bank
competition on pollution emissions. Fourth, the mandatory administrative means of impeding banks from lending to polluters did
not achieve the aim of pollution reduction. This study provides
evidence that the financial system of banks can have a material
impact on firms’ pollution emissions.
Ključne riječi
Bank competition; pollution emissions; environmental regulation; threshold effect; financial constraints
Hrčak ID:
301276
URI
Datum izdavanja:
31.12.2021.
Posjeta: 197 *