【报告主题】Financial Frictions and Pollution Abatement Over the Life Cycle of Firms
【主讲嘉宾】邹季洋，曼彻斯特大学助理教授
【报告时间】2024年12月10日 13:00
【报告地点】会计学院108室
【内容提要】
Using US firm-level data, we document significant differences in pollution abatement activities over the life cycle of firms. Under financial constraints, smaller and younger firms invest more in capital and engage less in pollution abatement; as they accumulate more net worth, their abatement activities accelerate, and their emission intensity reduces. Motivated by this evidence, we develop and quantify a heterogeneous firm model to study the relation between financial frictions, capital investment, and pollution abatement. In the model, smaller and younger firms prefer capital investment over pollution abatement because the returns from the former are higher than those from the latter. More importantly, we show financial frictions make environmental regulation sub-optimal at any level: they reduce aggregate welfare gain by 40%. Finally, we show that even without monitoring, green loan policies are considerably effective in reducing emission intensity.