Global shocks and green bonds issuance: An empirical evidence from firm-level panel data

This paper investigates the determinants of corporate green bond issuance using annual firm-level data for 300 issuers of green bonds, which issued green bonds over the period 2017-2021. Using the Poisson fixed-effects models we find that bond-specific characteristics, such as maturity, coupon rate, and currency are important determinants of the green bond issuance. Issuers of green bonds prefer longer maturity. Thus, governments can promote green bonds by stimulating demand for them from long-term investors such as pension funds. The issuance of green bonds in EURO, USD, CNY, JPY, SEK currencies has a positive impact on their issuance. Governments can promote green bonds by stimulating local demand for them, that way issuance in local currency will be more attractive. Or governments can make it easier to finance green projects using green bonds in foreign currency by denominating revenues to foreign currency using policy instruments, such as a feed-in tariff. More green bonds are issued with a higher coupon rate to attract sufficient demand for them. Thus, policies that increase revenue from green projects, such as feed-in tariffs or subsidized loans, can promote financing projects using green bonds. The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is positive but insignificant.