IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/10064.html

Green Investment by Firms : Finance or Climate Driven ?

Author

Listed:
  • Kalantzis,Fotios
  • Schweiger,Helena
  • Dominguez,Sofia

Abstract

There is limited research on the determinants of firms’ green investment strategies in developing regions despite their importance to meet global climate change targets. Understanding how changes in firm climate investment affect environmental performance is essential for policy makers and firms alike. Based on unique data from the joint European Bank for Reconstruction and Development–European Investment Bank–World Bank Group Enterprise Surveys, this paper empirically examines the role of access to finance and green management practices in firms’ green investment strategies. Based on logistic regressions, the econometric analysis finds a positive influence of green management practices on the number of mitigation measures implemented. By contrast, firms that are financially constrained are less likely to pursue many mitigation measures. Finally, the results do not show significant differences in the impact of financial constraints on the type of green investment, but indicate that better green management practices lead to a higher likelihood of investing in both capital- and non-capital-intensive green measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Kalantzis,Fotios & Schweiger,Helena & Dominguez,Sofia, 2022. "Green Investment by Firms : Finance or Climate Driven ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10064, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10064
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099725305102236711/pdf/IDU02bf347ba086050401008674010ed29aa4f84.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Reint Gropp & Thomas Mosk & Steven Ongena & Carlo Wix, 2019. "Banks Response to Higher Capital Requirements: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(1), pages 266-299.
    2. Backlund, Sandra & Thollander, Patrik & Palm, Jenny & Ottosson, Mikael, 2012. "Extending the energy efficiency gap," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 392-396.
    3. Sumit Agarwal, 2010. "Distance and Private Information in Lending," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(7), pages 2757-2788, July.
    4. Bleda, Mercedes & Shackley, Simon, 2008. "The dynamics of belief in climate change and its risks in business organisations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 517-532, June.
    5. Fisman, Raymond & Svensson, Jakob, 2007. "Are corruption and taxation really harmful to growth? Firm level evidence," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 63-75, May.
    6. Fankhauser, Samuel & Smith, Joel B. & Tol, Richard S. J., 1999. "Weathering climate change: some simple rules to guide adaptation decisions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 67-78, July.
    7. Simon Commander & Jan Svejnar, 2011. "Business Environment, Exports, Ownership, and Firm Performance," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 309-337, February.
    8. Schweiger, Helena & Stepanov, Alexander, 2022. "When good managers face bad incentives: Management quality and fuel intensity in the presence of price distortions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    9. Kalantzis, F. & Revoltella, D., 2019. "Do energy audits help SMEs to realize energy-efficiency opportunities?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 229-239.
    10. Hans Degryse & Steven Ongena, 2005. "Distance, Lending Relationships, and Competition," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 231-266, February.
    11. Tobias Fleitera & Joachim Schleich & Ployplearn Ravivanpong, 2012. "Adoption of energy-efficiency measures in SMEs - An empirical analysis based on energy audit data," Post-Print hal-00805748, HAL.
    12. Mr. David Coady & Ian W.H. Parry & Nghia-Piotr Le & Baoping Shang, 2019. "Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large: An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates," IMF Working Papers 2019/089, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Reyes Aterido & Mary Hallward-Driemeier & Carmen Pagés, 2011. "Big Constraints to Small Firms' Growth? Business Environment and Employment Growth across Firms," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(3), pages 609-647.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Guerini, Mattia & Marin, Giovanni & Vona, Francesco, 2025. "Easing Financial Constraints Reduce Carbon Emissions? Evidence from a Large Sample of French Companies," FEEM Working Papers 376272, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    2. Srivastava, Prachi & Bloom, Nicholas & Bunn, Philip & Mizen, Paul & Thwaites, Gregory & Yotzov, Ivan, 2026. "Firm climate investment: A glass half-full," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).

    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. Martin, R. & de Haas, Ralph & Muuls, Mirabelle & Schweiger, Helena, 2021. "Managerial and Financial Barriers to the Net-Zero Transition," Other publications TiSEM f0572d8a-40d7-458f-bb43-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Ralph De Haas & Ralf Martin & Mirabelle Muûls & Helena Schweiger, 2025. "Managerial and Financial Barriers to the Green Transition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(4), pages 2890-2921, April.
    3. Martin, R. & de Haas, Ralph & Muuls, Mirabelle & Schweiger, Helena, 2021. "Managerial and Financial Barriers to the Net-Zero Transition," Other publications TiSEM d95224cf-6fd8-486b-b9d7-4, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    4. Ralph De Haas & Ralf Martin & Mirabelle Muuls & Helena Schweiger, 2022. "Managerial and financial barriers during the green transition," CEP Discussion Papers dp1837, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    5. Christophe Cahn & Mattia Girotti & Federica Salvad, 2018. "External Credit Ratings and Bank Lending," Working papers 691, Banque de France.
    6. Nurullah Gur, 2012. "Financial Constraints, Quality of Institutions and Firm Size: What Do Perceptions Tell Us?," Eurasian Economic Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 2(2), pages 17-36, December.
    7. Nakatani, Ryota, 2021. "Total factor productivity enablers in the ICT industry: A cross-country firm-level analysis," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(9).
    8. Ryota Nakatani, 2024. "Food companies' productivity dynamics: Exploring the role of intangible assets," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 185-226, January.
    9. Sebastian Doerr, 2019. "Unintended side effects: stress tests, entrepreneurship, and innovation," BIS Working Papers 823, Bank for International Settlements.
    10. Jain, Ritika, 2020. "Bribery and firm performance in India: A political economy perspective," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    11. Hanousek, Jan & Kochanova, Anna, 2015. "Bribery Environment and Firm Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern European Countries," CEPR Discussion Papers 10499, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    12. Hanousek, Jan & Kochanova, Anna, 2016. "Bribery environments and firm performance: Evidence from CEE countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 14-28.
    13. Oznur Ozdamar & Eleftherios Giovanis & Sahizer Samuk, 2020. "State business relations and the dynamics of job flows in Egypt and Turkey," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(4), pages 519-558, December.
    14. Giulio Cornelli, 2025. "When bricks meet bytes: does tokenisation fill gaps in traditional real estate markets?," BIS Working Papers 1311, Bank for International Settlements.
    15. Mohammad Amin & Caroline Nogueira, 2025. "Does Competition from Informal Firms Encourage the Formal Firms to Obtain Quality Certificates ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11023, The World Bank.
    16. Zhang, Yingxin & Zang, Wenjiao & Sun, Chunxing, 2026. "Riding the terrain: Geographic influence on household adoption of digital finance," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    17. Jianpei Li & Lidong Ma & Bowen Li, 2025. "Financial Agglomeration, Bank Enterprise Distance, and SME Performance: Evidence from China," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 16(2), pages 8172-8197, June.
    18. Bellucci, Andrea & Borisov, Alexander & Zazzaro, Alberto, 2013. "Do banks price discriminate spatially? Evidence from small business lending in local credit markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4183-4197.
    19. Ongena, Steven & Popov, Alexander & Udell, Gregory F., 2013. "“When the cat's away the mice will play”: Does regulation at home affect bank risk-taking abroad?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 727-750.
    20. Guin, Benjamin, 2017. "Culture and household saving," Working Paper Series 2069, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    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:wbk:wbrwps:10064. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.