The Impact of Green Credit Policy on Technological Innovation of Firms in Pollution-Intensive Industries: Evidence from China

How to promote technological innovation with green finance policy has been a focal topic in the global green finance field in recent years. Using the difference-in-difference approach model, this paper investigated the impact of the Green Credit Guidance (GCG) policy implemented by the Chinese government in 2012 on the technological innovation of firms in pollution-intensive industries. The empirical results indicated that GCG had a negative impact, not only on research and development (R&D) input, but also on innovation output, and the impacts on firms with different property rights and different scales were consistent. Further research showed that GCG reduced the long-term debt of firms in pollution-intensive industries, and then significantly decreased the R&D input and innovation output; that is, long-term debt is a mediator in GCG and technology innovation. The results revealed that GCG fails to promote the technological innovation of firms in pollution-intensive industries. This paper suggests that China’s green credit policy should pay more attention to the technological innovation, transformation, and upgrading of firms in pollution-intensive industries.