Transition Finance Policy and Financing Constraints of High-Carbon Enterprises: Evidence from Ownership Heterogeneity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54691/ze8ywk37Keywords:
Transition finance, high-carbon firms, financing constraints, ownership heterogeneity, policy intensityAbstract
Transition finance aims to direct capital towards the decarbonisation of high-carbon sectors, but its effectiveness depends on whether policy signals reshape credit allocation. Based on Chinese A-share listed firms from 2015 to 2025, this paper manually codes local transition-finance policies and constructs measures of policy adoption and policy intensity. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design based on industry exposure, the analysis finds that transition-finance policies produce an initial financing-support signal for high-carbon firms, but this effect is not robust to stricter fixed effects, alternative policy and industry definitions, or additional tests on debt maturity and debt costs. Policy intensity also fails to generate stable financing improvement, and state-owned enterprises’ conventional financing advantage does not reliably extend to high-carbon transition finance. The evidence suggests that transition finance cannot rely on policy issuance alone. Its effectiveness depends on whether transition standards, verification mechanisms and risk-sharing arrangements are incorporated into banks’ credit screening, pricing and monitoring.
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