IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecb/ecbwps/20263253.html

Climate regulation, firm emissions, and green takeovers

Author

Listed:
  • De Jonghe, Olivier
  • Mulier, Klaas
  • Schepens, Glenn
  • Stimpfle, Leonard

Abstract

We show that an unexpected tightening of the EU Emissions Trading System led high-emission-intensity firms to cut emissions relative to low-intensity peers within the same industry, without reducing output, thereby improving emission efficiency. Effects are stronger for power producers than for manufacturing firms. Examining mergers and acquisitions (M&As), we find that high-intensity manufacturing firms acquire more green targets after the tightening than low-intensity firms, with no change in the overall number of acquisitions, indicating a shift in focus rather than activity. Finally, we show that these green M&As contributed to the observed emission reductions over the study period. JEL Classification: D22, G34, G38, Q53, Q54

Suggested Citation

  • De Jonghe, Olivier & Mulier, Klaas & Schepens, Glenn & Stimpfle, Leonard, 2026. "Climate regulation, firm emissions, and green takeovers," Working Paper Series 3253, European Central Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20263253
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp3253~e9db09cc25.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    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:ecb:ecbwps:20263253. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.html .

    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.