Capital market international integration and corporate demand for green skills: Evidence from MSCI index inclusion

This paper exploits the inclusion of China’s A-shares in the MSCI Emerging Markets index as a quasi-natural experiment to examine how capital market international integration affects corporate demand for green skills. Using a comprehensive dataset of online job postings and a staggered difference-in-differences framework, we find that capital market international integration significantly increases corporate demand for green skills. Furthermore, we show that green hirings serve as a credible commitment to corporate environmental initiatives, as they can substantially improve firms’ future environmental performance. Moreover, we identify three mechanisms underlying the positive impact of capital market international integration on green hirings: strengthened institutional investor oversight, heightened environmental reputation concerns, and improved accessibility and transparency of environmental information. Additional analyses reveal that capital market international integration promotes green skills demand, particularly in positions directly related to environmental improvement and sustainable development, rather than in those making only peripheral references to green topics. Overall, we provide novel insights into understanding the relationship between finance and labor in the context of capital market international integration.