Regional innovation distribution and its dynamic evolution: Policy impact and spillover effect-Based on the perspective of innovation motivation

Green merger and acquisition decision driven by environmental regulation and its impact on green innovation: evidence from Chinese heavily polluting listed enterprises

How heavily polluting enterprises achieve sustainable development has become an urgent issue to be solved. Based on the data of Chinese heavily polluting listed enterprises during the period of 2010-2020, this paper adopts the probit method to examine how heterogeneous environmental regulations affect green merger and acquisition (GMA) decision, and propensity score matching and difference-in-differences method to explore innovation performance of GMA. The findings are as follows: (1) Command-and-control environmental regulation (CMCER) can promote GMA, while there exists a U-shaped relationship between market-based environmental regulation (MBER) and GMA; (2) from a dynamic perspective, it turns out that GMA can promote green innovation (GI) in the first and second post-acquisition year, but this effect disappears in the third year; (3) compared with CMCER, MBER has a more pronounced positive effect on the relationship between GMA and GI; (4) heterogeneous analysis indicates that the above GMA performance is more persistent when the acquirer is state-owned, with high media attention, with high internal control or engages in vertical GMA. The findings further enrich the literature on GMA driver and performance and provide references for optimizing ER policies and promoting corporate sustainable development.

How does China's green credit policy affect the green innovation of heavily polluting enterprises? The perspective of substantive and strategic innovations

Green credit policy is an important practice to guide green development through the rational allocation of credit funds. Using the promulgation of the "Green Credit Guidelines" policy in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper examines the impact of green credit policy on heavily polluting enterprises' substantive and strategic green innovations within a difference-in-differences framework. We find that green credit policy improves the overall and strategic green innovations but has no significant effect on substantive green innovation of heavily polluting enterprises. Moreover, this effect is more prominent for state-owned enterprises and enterprises in regions with lower levels of financial development. Further analysis demonstrates that the green innovation induced by green credit policy increases heavily polluting enterprises' loan availability but does not improve heavily polluting enterprises' value. This paper sheds new light on the relationship between green credit policy and corporate green innovation in China as a transition economy.