Financial innovation and environmental quality: Fresh empirical evidence from the EU Countries

Evidence shows that the European Union (EU) is a leader in using financial innovation to overcome environmental challenges and ensure sustainable development. This study explores the heterogeneous effects of financial innovations on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) due to their destructive effects in the context of the EU, by employing the novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MM-QR). The study also evaluates the environmental Kuznets hypothesis during the period of 2000–2020. We used four proxies for financial innovation; the ratio of the aggregate money supply to narrow money (M3/M1), the ratio of broad to narrow money (M2/M1), the percentage change in domestic credit to the private sector (% of GDP) and a composite index of these indices using the Principal Component Analysis technique. The findings indicate that raising three financial innovation proxies can effectively raise environmental quality. It should be noted that while M3/M1 has a stronger and negative effect on CO2 emissions in low quantiles, M2/M1 has a stronger and negative effect on CO2 emissions in high quantiles. Therefore, it is recommended that a larger amount of M2 and M3 resources be directed towards green projects for financing in countries with both high and low levels of CO2 emissions, respectively.