Green Finance, Enterprise Energy Efficiency, and Green Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from China

Climate change has become a global issue that requires collective efforts, and green finance policies are an important way to address this problem and promote enterprise development. This paper uses listed company data and city panel data to investigate the utility and mechanisms of the influence of the development of green finance in different cities on the Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) of enterprises. The conclusion was that green finance can improve enterprise GTFP, which remained significant after conducting a series of robustness tests. The mechanism analysis showed that green finance can improve enterprise GTFP by promoting energy conservation and emission reduction. The heterogeneity analysis indicated that green finance has a better effect on non-state-owned enterprises, large-scale enterprises, and enterprises with weak financing constraints. This paper enriches the literature that addresses the impact of green finance and the influential factors among GTFP.