IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2024i11p4321-d1398328.html

The Impact of Climate Change Transition Innovations on the Default Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Yujun Huang

    (School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China)

  • Zhihao Huang

    (School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China)

Abstract

In the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation, climate risks stemming from climate transition innovations have garnered significant attention due to concerns about the inadequate climate finance. To shed light on the climate transition risk posed by innovations, this study constructed low-carbon innovation indicators of listed firms in China spanning 2015 to 2021. This study investigated the impact of climate transition innovations on the default risk, considering the mediation effect of investor attention, total factor productivity, and technology spillovers. The findings suggest that low-carbon innovations can mitigate the default risk of listed firms, as evidenced by three low-carbon innovation indicators. Additionally, the research reveals that the climate innovation effect on default risks was moderated when considering climate policy through heterogenous analysis. Furthermore, instrumental variable regressions using the time costs of innovation support the findings. Lastly, default risk was mitigated through lower levels of investor attention, greater total factor productivity, and technology spillovers.

Suggested Citation

  • Yujun Huang & Zhihao Huang, 2024. "The Impact of Climate Change Transition Innovations on the Default Risk," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-23, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:11:p:4321-:d:1398328
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/11/4321/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/11/4321/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Misani, Nicola & Pogutz, Stefano, 2015. "Unraveling the effects of environmental outcomes and processes on financial performance: A non-linear approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 150-160.
    2. Hongfeng Zhang & Lu Huang & Yan Zhu & Hongyun Si & Xu He, 2021. "Does Low-Carbon City Construction Improve Total Factor Productivity? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-21, November.
    3. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    4. Daron Acemoglu & Ufuk Akcigit & Douglas Hanley & William Kerr, 2016. "Transition to Clean Technology," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(1), pages 52-104.
    5. Marcus Wagner, 2005. "How to reconcile environmental and economic performance to improve corporate sustainability: corporate environmental strategies in the European paper industry," Post-Print hal-00279158, HAL.
    6. Ghisetti, Claudia & Pontoni, Federico, 2015. "Investigating policy and R&D effects on environmental innovation: A meta-analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 57-66.
    7. Pedro de Faria & Francisco Lima, 2012. "Interdependence and spillovers: is firm performance affected by others’ innovation activities?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(36), pages 4765-4775, December.
    8. Liu, Fengqi & Kang, Yuxin & Guo, Kun & Sun, Xiaolei, 2021. "The relationship between air pollution, investor attention and stock prices: Evidence from new energy and polluting sectors," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    9. Jing-Wen Huang & Yong-Hui Li, 2017. "Green Innovation and Performance: The View of Organizational Capability and Social Reciprocity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 145(2), pages 309-324, October.
    10. He, Feng & Yan, Yulin & Hao, Jing & Wu, Ji (George), 2022. "Retail investor attention and corporate green innovation: Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    11. Viardot, Eric, 2013. "The role of cooperatives in overcoming the barriers to adoption of renewable energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 756-764.
    12. Yao, Shouyu & Pan, Yuying & Sensoy, Ahmet & Uddin, Gazi Salah & Cheng, Feiyang, 2021. "Green credit policy and firm performance: What we learn from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    13. Cahen-Fourot, Louison & Campiglio, Emanuele & Godin, Antoine & Kemp-Benedict, Eric & Trsek, Stefan, 2021. "Capital stranding cascades: The impact of decarbonisation on productive asset utilisation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Gunday, Gurhan & Ulusoy, Gunduz & Kilic, Kemal & Alpkan, Lutfihak, 2011. "Effects of innovation types on firm performance," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(2), pages 662-676, October.
    15. Sreedhar T. Bharath & Tyler Shumway, 2008. "Forecasting Default with the Merton Distance to Default Model," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(3), pages 1339-1369, May.
    16. Deng, Chao & Zhou, Xiaoying & Peng, Cheng & Zhu, Huiming, 2022. "Going green: Insight from asymmetric risk spillover between investor attention and pro-environmental investment," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PA).
    17. Zhongju Liao, 2018. "Corporate culture, environmental innovation and financial performance," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(8), pages 1368-1375, December.
    18. Ana M. Fernandes & Caroline Paunov, 2015. "The Risks of Innovation: Are Innovating Firms Less Likely to Die?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(3), pages 638-653, July.
    19. Sam Arts & Bruno Cassiman & Juan Carlos Gomez, 2018. "Text matching to measure patent similarity," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 62-84, January.
    20. Du, Kerui & Li, Pengzhen & Yan, Zheming, 2019. "Do green technology innovations contribute to carbon dioxide emission reduction? Empirical evidence from patent data," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 297-303.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aastvedt, Tonje Marthinsen & Behmiri, Niaz Bashiri & Lu, Li, 2021. "Does green innovation damage financial performance of oil and gas companies?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    2. Benkraiem, Ramzi & Dubocage, Emmanuelle & Lelong, Yann & Shuwaikh, Fatima, 2023. "The effects of environmental performance and green innovation on corporate venture capital," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    3. Lu Zheng & Konstantinos Iatridis, 2022. "Friends or foes? A systematic literature review and meta‐analysis of the relationship between eco‐innovation and firm performance," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 1838-1855, May.
    4. Ayça Kubra Hizarci‐Payne & İlayda İpek & Gülüzar Kurt Gümüş, 2021. "How environmental innovation influences firm performance: A meta‐analytic review," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 1174-1190, February.
    5. Luo, Zijun & Li, Mingyang & Hu, Xueqin & Xu, Hao, 2025. "Beyond awareness: How investor-initiated communications reduce corporate carbon emissions," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    6. Matos, Stelvia & Viardot, Eric & Sovacool, Benjamin K. & Geels, Frank W. & Xiong, Yu, 2022. "Innovation and climate change: A review and introduction to the special issue," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    7. Li, Wei-An & Du, Hanyu & He, Feng, 2025. "Mandatory corporate ESG disclosure and default risk – Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    8. Ulrike Malmendier & Vincenzo Pezone & Hui Zheng, 2023. "Managerial Duties and Managerial Biases," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3174-3201, June.
    9. Zhou, Fanyin & Fu, Lijun & Li, Zhiyong & Xu, Jiawei, 2022. "The recurrence of financial distress: A survival analysis," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1100-1115.
    10. Hu, Xiaolu & Shi, Jing & Wang, Lafang & Yu, Jing, 2020. "Foreign ownership in Chinese credit ratings industry: Information revelation or certification?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    11. Benjamin Christoffersen & David Lando & Søren Feodor Nielsen, 2022. "Estimating volatility in the Merton model: The KMV estimate is not maximum likelihood," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 1214-1230, October.
    12. Chen, Shenglan & Ma, Hui & Teng, Haimeng & Wu, Qiang, 2022. "Banking liberalization and corporate tax planning: Evidence from natural experiments," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    13. Wen, Wen & Dong, Jinghan & Niu, Yuhao, 2026. "Public data availability and bond credit spreads: Evidence from China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    14. Xueying Yuan & Lixia Shang & Jinhua Xu, 2024. "Green Financial Policy, Resource Allocation and Corporate Environmental Responsibility," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(15), pages 1-29, July.
    15. Wang, Peiwen & Chen, Minghua & Wu, Ji & Yan, Yuanyun, 2023. "Do peer effects matter in bank risk? Some cross-country evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    16. Meles, Antonio & Salerno, Dario & Sampagnaro, Gabriele & Verdoliva, Vincenzo & Zhang, Jianing, 2023. "The influence of green innovation on default risk: Evidence from Europe," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 692-710.
    17. Zhao, Xiaoke & Li, Huirong & Liu, Shengtao, 2025. "The power of credit: can the implementation of a social credit system reduce the risk of corporate debt default?," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 749-763.
    18. Evan Dudley & Niclas Andrén & Håkan Jankensgård, 2022. "How do firms hedge in financial distress?," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(7), pages 1324-1351, July.
    19. Mohsen Afsharian & Anna Kryvko & Peter Reichling, 2011. "Efficiency and Its Impact on the Performance of European Commercial Banks," FEMM Working Papers 110018, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    20. Christian Dorion & Pascal François & Gunnar Grass & Alexandre Jeanneret, 2014. "Convertible Debt and Shareholder Incentives," Cahiers de recherche 1403, CIRPEE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:11:p:4321-:d:1398328. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.