IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mse/cesdoc/25012.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Case for a Green Financial Transaction Tax

Author

Abstract

The aim of this note is to assess whether and how the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) could be "greened"that is, adapted or utilized to support environmental objectives and the financing of the transition to a more sustainable economy. While traditionally conceived as a regulatory tool, the FTT also holds unexploited potential as an instrument for climate finance and broader environmental alignment. This paper outlines five complementary arguments in favor of a green FTT: (1) its capacity to mobilize stable, international funding for global public goods; (2) its symbolic relevance in light of the financial sector's contribution to social and environmental disruption; (3) its ability to modestly lengthen investment horizons and counteract excessive short-termism; (4) its potential to enhance public trust in finance by matching rhetoric about sustainable finance with contributions; and (5) its prospective use as a differentiated tool to reward environmentally responsible issuers. The paper also includes a first quantitative assessment of potential revenues from a tiered green FTT, illustrating how such a mechanism could operationalize the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in climate finance. While recognizing practical limitations (in terms of governance, data reliability, and risk of complexity) the paper concludes that a well-calibrated green FTT could be a simple yet effective lever in aligning financial markets with the ecological transition

Suggested Citation

  • Gunther Capelle-Blancard, 2025. "The Case for a Green Financial Transaction Tax," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 25012, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:25012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bolton, Patrick & Kacperczyk, Marcin, 2021. "Do investors care about carbon risk?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 517-549.
    2. Shleifer, Andrei, 2000. "Inefficient Markets: An Introduction to Behavioral Finance," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198292272.
    3. Gunther Capelle-Blancard & Avinash Persaud, 2025. "Levies on Equity Transactions to Finance Climate Action," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 25011, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    4. Dyck, Alexander & Lins, Karl V. & Roth, Lukas & Wagner, Hannes F., 2019. "Do institutional investors drive corporate social responsibility? International evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(3), pages 693-714.
    5. Florian Berg & Julian F Kölbel & Roberto Rigobon, 2022. "Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings [Corporate social responsibility and firm risk: theory and empirical evidence]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1315-1344.
    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. Alves, Rómulo & Krüger, Philipp & van Dijk, Mathijs, 2025. "Drawing up the bill: Are ESG ratings related to stock returns around the world?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. Li, Suyang & Qiao, Lu & Ren, Boru & Wang, Zilong, 2025. "Financing sustainability: Sustainable institutional investors and bank loan access," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Roman Kräussl & Tobi Oladiran & Denitsa Stefanova, 2024. "A review on ESG investing: Investors’ expectations, beliefs and perceptions," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 476-502, April.
    4. Huang, Chenchen & Luo, Di & Mukherjee, Soumyatanu & Mishra, Tapas, 2022. "To Acquire or to Ally? Managing Partners’ Environmental Risk in International Expansion," MPRA Paper 121808, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 07 Jan 2023.
    5. Gibbon, Kayshani & Derwall, Jeroen & Gerritsen, Dirk & Koedijk, Kees, 2025. "Renaming with purpose: Investor response and fund manager behaviour after fund ESG renaming," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    6. Mihir Tirodkar & Henk Berkman, 2023. "Are polluters shunned? A study on the institutional ownership and returns of polluter stocks," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 513-537, August.
    7. Galema, Rients & Gerritsen, Dirk, 2025. "ESG rating changes and stock returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    8. Rajna Gibson Brandon & Simon Glossner & Philipp Krueger & Pedro Matos & Tom Steffen, 2022. "Do Responsible Investors Invest Responsibly? [Why and how investors use ESG information: evidence from a global survey]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(6), pages 1389-1432.
    9. Xu, Chong & Tao, Miaomiao & Qi, Lingli & Roubaud, David, 2025. "Can green CEOs trigger the green premium effect?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    10. Chen, Jianqiang & Hsieh, Pei-Fang & Hsu, Po-Hsuan & Levine, Ross, 2025. "Environmental liabilities, borrowing costs, and pollution prevention activities: The nationwide impact of the Apex Oil ruling," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    11. Xie, Xuejing & Gong, Yukai & Cheng, Le, 2025. "Managerial myopia and carbon emission: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    12. Giglio, Stefano & Maggiori, Matteo & Stroebel, Johannes & Tan, Zhenhao & Utkus, Stephen & Xu, Xiao, 2025. "Four facts about ESG beliefs and investor portfolios," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    13. Li, Qianqian & Watts, Edward M. & Zhu, Christina, 2024. "Retail investors and ESG news," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2).
    14. Bauer, Michael D. & Offner, Eric A. & Rudebusch, Glenn D., 2025. "Green stocks and monetary policy shocks: Evidence from Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    15. Alessi, Lucia & Battiston, Stefano, 2022. "Two sides of the same coin: Green Taxonomy alignment versus transition risk in financial portfolios," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    16. Gillan, Stuart L. & Koch, Andrew & Starks, Laura T., 2021. "Firms and social responsibility: A review of ESG and CSR research in corporate finance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    17. Choi, Dong Beom & Jeong, Seongjun, 2025. "CSR scores versus actual impacts: Banks’ main street lending during the great recession," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    18. Cheng, Louis T.W. & Shen, Jianfu & Wojewodzki, Michal, 2023. "A cross-country analysis of corporate carbon performance: An international investment perspective," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    19. Alona Bilokha & Mingying Cheng & Mengchuan Fu & Iftekhar Hasan, 2025. "Understanding CSR champions: a machine learning approach," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 347(1), pages 761-774, April.
    20. Florackis, Chris & Muktadir-Al-Mukit, Dewan & Sainani, Sushil & Zhang, Ziyang (John), 2025. "Stock market reaction to mandatory carbon disclosure announcements: The role of institutional investors," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mse:cesdoc:25012. 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: Lucie Label (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cenp1fr.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.