Stock Market Liberalization and Corporate Green Innovation: Evidence from China

Corporate green innovation is an effective way to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction. Enterprises’ willingness to pursue green innovation is increasingly affected by external factors. By using a quasi-natural experiment of China’s Stock Connect program, we investigate the impact of stock market liberalization on corporate green innovation. We find that stock market liberalization increases enterprises’ green innovation, especially for state-owned enterprises. We also find that stock market liberalization plays a stronger role in promoting the green invention patents of enterprises whose managers have overseas experience and enterprises in areas with a higher degree of openness. Our mechanism analysis suggests that stock market liberalization attracts the attention of securities analysts and increases managers’ focus on environmental protection, thereby promoting corporate green innovation. Our findings show that stock market liberalization plays an important role in the governance of firms’ non-financial behavior, which has important theoretical and practical implications.