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The impact of green credit on economic growth—The mediating effect of environment on labor supply

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  • Cai Chen
  • Yingli Zhang
  • Yun Bai
  • Wenrui Li

Abstract

Background: The progress of green credit in China is accelerating, but its development is uneven and insufficient in different regions. And whether the issuance of green credit can effectively promote the improvement of the environment and economy is not well understood. Objective: Previous research has found that green credit promotes economic growth through improvement of the industrial structure and green technological innovation. However, these studies have not considered the positive externality of environmental improvement even though environmental improvement and economic growth are requirements of the sustainable development concept. Methods: We use the chain-mediated model to estimate the impact of green credit issuance on the economic growth of different provinces since the large-scale implementation of green credit in China with data from 2008 to 2016. Results and conclusion: This paper shows that the issuance of green credit can improve labor supply rather than labor productivity through the improvement of air quality to achieve regional economic growth. Such a chain-mediated path is different from the economic growth caused by industrial structural adjustment and green technology innovation. At the national level, every 1% increase in green credit issuance relative to industrial loans will increase the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) by approximately 4.6 yuan, or 0.012%, through air quality and labor supply, accounting for 2.875% of the total effect. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that due to regional industrial structure differences and diminishing marginal effects, the impact of green credit is stronger in the western region than in the eastern and central regions. For every 1% increase in the proportion of green credit issuance relative to industrial loans, the per capita GDP growth achieved through the chain-mediated path is approximately 30.17 yuan in the western region, approximately 6.6 times greater than that at the national level. Within a 95% confidence interval of 5000 bootstrap samples, this path is found to be true, and the chain-mediated effect accounts for approximately 12.96% of the total indirect effect. Limitations: The limitation of this paper is the measurement of green credit. Although green credit has a large volume, it remains underdeveloped, and there is a lack of perfect indicators. Most existing studies have adopted only alternative or reverse indicators to measure the issuance of green credit. For example, this paper takes the interest expenditure of six high-energy-consuming enterprises as the reverse indicator, which may to a certain extent lead to the overestimation of the issuance of green credit and its impact on the environment and economy. Future research can accurately explore the performance of green credit on the basis of its mature development.

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  • Cai Chen & Yingli Zhang & Yun Bai & Wenrui Li, 2021. "The impact of green credit on economic growth—The mediating effect of environment on labor supply," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-21, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0257612
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257612
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    Cited by:

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    2. Yan Yang & Yingli Zhang, 2022. "The Impact of the Green Credit Policy on the Short-Term and Long-Term Debt Financing of Heavily Polluting Enterprises: Based on PSM-DID Method," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-18, September.
    3. Fangming Xie & Yali Liu & Mengman Yang, 2023. "Spatial spillover effect of environmental regulation on regional economic growth," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(7), pages 7149-7160, July.
    4. Xiaowei Ding & Ruxu Jing & Kaikun Wu & Maria V. Petrovskaya & Zhikun Li & Alina Steblyanskaya & Lyu Ye & Xiaotong Wang & Vasiliy M. Makarov, 2022. "The Impact Mechanism of Green Credit Policy on the Sustainability Performance of Heavily Polluting Enterprises—Based on the Perspectives of Technological Innovation Level and Credit Resource Allocatio," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-26, November.
    5. Di Chen & Haiqing Hu & Chun‐Ping Chang, 2023. "Green finance, environment regulation, and industrial green transformation for corporate social responsibility," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(5), pages 2166-2181, September.
    6. Cai Chen & Shunbin Zhong & Yingli Zhang & Yun Bai, 2023. "The Economic Impact of Green Credit: From the Perspective of Industrial Structure and Green Total Factor Productivity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-22, January.
    7. Yalin Mo & Dinghai Sun & Yu Zhang, 2023. "Green Finance Assists Agricultural Sustainable Development: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-15, January.

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