Explaining green bond issuance using survey evidence: Beyond the greenium

The paper examines the drivers and challenges of issuing green bonds from the perspective of green bond issuers. Using survey evidence of global issuers representing 29% of total green bond issuances, the research shows that reputational benefits, the market signalling power of green bonds and a desire to curb climate change are the main motives for green bond issuance. In contrast, insufficient market evolvement, and a lack of awareness and suitable green projects represent the biggest barriers for entry to the green bond market. Most respondents consider green bond issuance costs to be higher than those of comparable plain vanilla bonds, but acceptable due to the benefits they derive from green bond issuances. Among these benefits, respondents report higher levels of demand for green bonds, higher levels of investor engagement, diversification of their investor base and a strengthened internal commitment to sustainability. Issuers' experiences vary regarding the pricing of green bonds – with 48% of respondents stating that their green bond funding costs are the same as for their plain vanilla bonds and 42% reporting lower green bond funding costs. Most issuers favour a standardisation of the definition of ‘green’ for determining which projects can be funded via green bonds.     

Should investors include green bonds in their portfolios? Evidence for the USA and Europe

The green bond market has seen a rapid growth world widely in recent years. This paper explores the role of green bonds in asset allocation using the dynamic R-vine copula-based mean-CVaR approach. We compare the performance of portfolios including green bonds with that of portfolios including conventional bonds in the U.S. and European markets. Empirical results show that portfolios with green bonds outperform portfolios with conventional bonds in terms of risk-adjusted returns in the majority of cases in both markets. The benefit of green bonds comes from both the increase in the return and the decrease in the volatility for most of the cases. Overall, our findings suggest that green bonds are beneficial to investors.     

Do shareholders benefit from green bonds?

The green bond market has been growing rapidly worldwide since its debut in 2007. We present the first empirical study on the announcement returns and real effects of green bond issuance by firms in 28 countries during 2007–2017. After compiling a comprehensive international green bond dataset, we document that stock prices positively respond to green bond issuance. However, we do not find a consistently significant premium for green bonds, suggesting that the positive stock returns around green bond announcements are not fully driven by the lower cost of debt. Nevertheless, we show that institutional ownership, especially from domestic institutions, increases after the firm issues green bonds. Moreover, stock liquidity significantly improves upon the issuance of green bonds. Overall, our findings suggest that the firm's issuance of green bonds is beneficial to its existing shareholders.     

Financing the green projects: Market efficiency and volatility persistence of green versus conventional bonds,and the comparative effects of health and financial crises

The establishment of the green bond market is an attempt to attain environmental sustainability from the finance perspective. One of the factors that could either hinder or promote this course is the degree of market efficiency of the market. Against this background, this study comparatively examines the market efficiency of the U.S. green and conventional bonds. In addition, the performance of both markets is investigated during global health and financial crises. Applying the fractional integration technique, we find that the overall green and conventional bonds markets are still inefficient, indicating that green and conventional investors can make excess gains by predicting the future trends of bond prices. There is also evidence that the green bond market exhibits higher volatility persistence during the global health crisis than during the global financial crisis. These findings are corroborated by the GARCH-based models, whose results show that volatility shocks are more persistent in the green bond market during the health crisis than during the financial crisis. However, the conventional bond market observes persistence in volatility shocks during both events. Towards sustainable environment goals, these results have relevant implications for green investors and policy makers.     

Voluntary disclosure and adverse selection: Bayesian game theoretical inference for green bond labelling regimes

The impact finance market has sought to ‘internalise externalities and adjust risk perceptions’ (G20 Green Finance Study Group, 2016), demonstrating the private sector’s capability in resolving the climate free-rider problem through the ‘greening’ of economic activities, partially bypassing corrective government intervention. As the market continues to develop, however, the voluntary disclosure regime that the market operates under threatens to enforce an adverse selection problem and contribute to a fundamental erosion of confidence in the market segment, constraining the potential of impact finance instruments to effect positive social and environmental change. This paper relates the work of Crawford and Sobel (1982), Milgrom (1981), Verrecchia (1983), Jung and Kwon (1988), Myers and Majluf (1984) to the green bond market and draws inferences to inform recommendations for policy-led solutions aimed at ensuring the alignment of green bonds’ proceeds to the interests of society (desirable outcomes within the scope of the Paris agreement, for example) and upholding the market’s credibility. This paper additionally explores the transplantation of sustainability linker mechanisms into green bond architecture to ensure simultaneous issuer-level alignment.     

Why do institutional investors buy green bonds: Evidence from a survey of European asset managers

Using survey evidence from European asset managers, we provide insights into their green bond investment activities and the factors that affect their investment decisions. We find that the majority of investors are actively invested in the green bond market via a variety of investment channels. Investors prefer green bonds issued from corporate issuers and sovereigns and we find that there is strong unmet investor demand for green bonds from these issuer types, in particular from non-financial corporates in the industrials, automotive and utilities sectors. Competitive pricing and strong green credentials, both pre- and post-issuance, are the most frequently named factors impacting respondents' decision to invest in a green bond, and unclear and poor reporting on how bond proceeds are allocated to green projects induces a majority of investors to not invest in a green bond or to sell a bond if already included in the portfolio. Among policy measures to grow the green bond market, preferential capital treatment for low-carbon assets and minimum standards for green definitions receive the highest investor support, but respondents are divided whether a strict definition of ‘green’ or a less strict definition would be more beneficial for scaling up the green bond market.     

Trading and liquidity in the catastrophe bond market

We provide first insights into secondary market trading, liquidity determinants, and the liquidity premium of catastrophe bonds. Based on transaction data from TRACE (Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine), we find that cat bonds are traded less frequently during the hurricane season and more often close to maturity. Trading activity indicates that the market is dominated by brokers without a proprietary inventory. Liquidity is high in periods of high trading activity in the overall market and for bonds with low default risk or close to maturity, which results from lower order processing costs. Finally, using realized bid–ask spreads as a liquidity measure, we find that on average, 21% of the observable yield spread on the cat bond market is attributable to the liquidity premium, with a magnitude of up to 141 bps for high-risk bonds.     

Pledgeability and Asset Prices: Evidence from the Chinese Corporate Bond Markets

We provide causal evidence on the value of asset pledgeability by exploiting a unique feature of Chinese corporate bond markets: bonds with identical fundamentals are traded on two segmented markets with different rules for repo transactions. Using a policy shock that rendered AA+ and AA bonds ineligible for repo on one market only, we compare how bond prices changed across markets and rating classes around this event. When the haircut increases from 0% to 100%, bond yields increase by 39 bps to 85 bps. These estimates help us infer the magnitude of the shadow cost of capital in China.     

Dynamic spillovers between uncertainties and green bond markets in the US,Europe, and China: Evidence from the quantile VAR framework

This paper investigates the quantile connectedness between uncertainties and green bonds in the US, Europe, and China by using a quantile VAR model-based connectedness approach. The empirical findings suggest that the spillover effect under extreme market conditions is significantly higher than that under normal market conditions. We also show that stock market uncertainty (VIX) and oil market uncertainty (OVX) have a greater impact on green bonds, especially in extreme upward markets. In addition, the US is the dominant transmitter of spillovers in other green bond markets, while China is always the net receiver of spillovers. Further research, meanwhile, demonstrates that the connectedness between green bonds and uncertainties is time-varying and that the spillover effects at extreme upper and lower quantiles are asymmetric and heterogeneous, especially in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings provide investors and policymakers with systematic insights into the risk resistance of different green bond markets.     

The European Central Bank and green finance: How would the green quantitative easing affect the investors' behavior during times of crisis?

In July 2021, the European central bank (ECB) announced the application of new environmental criteria to purchase private assets as part of its Quantitative Easing (QE) program. Using a Bayesian VAR model with time varying parameters and stochastic volatility (TVP-BVAR-SV), we investigate the transmission of Green bond shocks to the stock market during the pre-and-post COVID-19 pandemic. We document a nonlinear relation between the green bonds and the green equities. Our findings suggest that the ECB's Green QE can drive investors towards green investment in the stock market through the green bond market during the non-crisis period. However, we show that the proper transmission of Green QE shocks to the stock market depends on the economic conditions and could not be effective during the crisis period. Our results also support previous findings that state the growing demand for sustainable investing after COVID-19. These findings have important implications for investment professionals, policymakers, and environmentally concerned actors.     

Do green financial policies offset the climate transition risk penalty imposed on long-term sovereign bond yields?

Asset valuations in high-carbon sectors face significant corrections due to climate risks. This paper specifically analyses whether markets impose a penalty on long-term sovereign bonds issued by countries facing higher climate-related transition risk while rewarding those that have implemented green financial policies to mitigate these risks. We find that higher carbon dioxide emissions and a lower sustainable development score (both proxies for transition risks) lead to an increase in long-term sovereign bond yields. However, the presence of green financial policies appears to offset this climate transition risk premium.     

What do we know about the price spillover between green bonds and Islamic stocks and stock market indices?

This paper investigates the risk transmission, linkages, and directional predictability between green bonds, Islamic stocks, and other asset classes. Using daily data from November 2008 to August 2020, we use the Standard & Poor's (S&P) Green Bond Index to represent the green bond market and the Dow Jones Islamic World Index and the S&P Global Shariah Indices to represent Islamic stocks. The other asset classes considered include the S&P 500 Stock Composite, S&P 500 Bond, and S&P 500 Energy indices. This paper uses the novel quantile cross-spectral (coherency), the windowed scalogram difference (WSD), and the cross-quantilogram (CQ) correlation approaches. The results from the quantile coherency analysis reveal a negative spillover effect from green bond price returns to Islamic stocks in the long run, which indicates that the green bond market poses a long-run systemic risk to Islamic stocks. From the WSD analysis, the results show that the integration between green bonds and Islamic stocks, the S&P 500 Stock Composite, and the S&P 500 Bond index is weaker during volatile market conditions. The CQ correlation suggests that the dependency between green bonds and other asset returns is concentrated in the lower quantiles and that this dependency is weaker at longer lags. Our results underscore the significance of green bonds in investor portfolios as a new investment asset class.     

Investor strategies in the green bond market: The influence of liquidity risks,economic factors and clientele effects

The green bond market has dramatically expanded especially in Europe but severe liquidity issues may undermine its rapid development. If few studies have assessed the implied liquidity risks for investors in terms of liquidity premium, none of them have specifically analysed its behavior across bond maturities. To fill this gap, this paper studies the term structure of the liquidity premium of the green bond market.We find that the sizes of short-term and long-term premia are close to those estimated on the German government bond market. We show that those premia are affected by economic factors and by spillover effects between them, which contribute to the U-Shape of the liquidity premium. Finally, we detect a liquidity clientele effect on the ask side impacting the liquidity premium, which implies a maturity segmentation i.e., high-risk (resp. low-risk) investors buy short-term (resp. long-term) green bonds and hold them until maturity.Taken together, our results deliver valuable insights on investors' strategies in the green bond market. Quite importantly, green bond investors prefer to opt for buy and hold strategies because they are compensated for higher liquidity risks along the entire maturity spectrum.     

Fitting the term structure of interest rates for Taiwanese government bonds

The term structure of interest rates provides a basis for pricing fixed-income securities and interest rate derivative securities as well as other capital assets. Unfortunately, the term structure is not always directly observable because most of the substitutes for default-free bonds are not pure discount bonds. We use curve fitting techniques with the observed government coupon bond prices to estimate the term structure. In this paper, the B-spline approximation is used to estimate the Taiwanese Government Bond (TGB) term structure. We apply the B-spline functions to approximate the discount function, spot yield curve, and forward yield curve respectively. Among the three approaches, the discount fitting approach and the spot fitting approach are reasonable and reliable, but the spot fitting approach achieves the most suitable fit. Using this methodology, we can investigate term structure fitting problems, identify coupon effects, and analyze factors which drive term structure fluctuations in the TGB market.     

Price behavior of deep discount bonds

With rising interest rate trends, deep discount bonds are more commonly observed. The traditional view has been that, for a given yield change, the changes in bond prices are larger, the longer the maturity. This note shows that, for a deep discount bond, there is a switchover point beyond which the traditional view no longer holds. This is true for percentage as well as for dollar price changes. The traditional view should be corrected to avoid misleading effects on the management of bond portfolios.     

YIELD VOLATILITY OF DISCOUNT COUPON BONDS

In this research, the yield volatility of coupon-taxable discount bonds is analyzed. The relationship of before-tax yield changes on discounts as compared with changes in new, par issue (market) yields is developed in the form of a net yield factor (NYF). Also, the behavior of the NYF as dependent upon parameters such as maturity, coupon, market yield, and tax rates is examined. Then, the incorporation and impact of the NYF on price volatility are shown. Finally, results of empirical tests are reported, which validate the usefulness of NYFs in the measurement of yield volatility for discount bonds.     

Go green or stay black: Bond market dynamics in Asia

This paper presents a picture of the risk spillover relationship of green & black bonds in Asia. In normal situations and the long-term horizon, green bonds and black bonds have similar impacts with each other, with a slight predominance of black bonds. Based on the dynamic connectedness results, we classify the sample period into three stages. The first stage is a period with equal role of green and black bonds from Jan 2018 to Feb 2020, which is regarded as a normal situation of the bond market. The second stage is an unbalanced period with a pivotal point of the Covid-19, demonstrating an increased gap of the connectedness exported by green and black bonds. The third stage is the recovery period after Oct 2020, where we see a correction with the role of green and black bonds recovering gradually to the equal status. In addition, the green-to-black connectedness in longer term witnesses faster and stronger recovery, which suggests that the long-term influences of green bonds are relatively stable than the short-term influences. Moreover, the paper tests the effects of the same issuer. Our analysis shows that there are strong connections among bonds in the Philippines that are issued by the same institution. However, the same issuer is not a sufficient condition for a strong connectedness. Furthermore, our analysis in China Mainland, reveals that the green policy will firstly cause the change of green bonds price and then spillover the impact to conventional markets. Through the study of the drivers of connectedness dynamics in four directions (green-to-green, black-to-black, green-to-black, black-to-green), we present empirical findings that are crucial for investors and policymakers in risk management, hedging strategy, and green investment acceleration.     

A Model of Intertemporal Discount Rates in the Presence of Real and Inflationary Autocorrelations

This paper discusses the pricing of assets in an intertemporal rational-expectations model when real production and inflation evolve according to first-order autocorrelated processes. The focus is on the structure of the various intertemporal discount rates (yields) exhibited by this economy. Yield curves are identified for consumption claims, indexed bonds, and nominally riskless bonds and can be extended to any claim that can be approximated by a (finite) linear combination of such securities. The model demonstrates that, if the average term structure for nominally riskless securities is upward sloping, then the yield curve for consumption (market) claims is downward sloping, suggesting that conventional methods for computing long-term discount rates err by not accounting for maturity factors. The paper also explores the relationship between the intertemporal equilibrium and its embedded single-period equilibria. The single-period risk measures in this economy are derived and shown to be (generally) functions of maturity. A model of nominal bond betas is constructed along these lines. It is shown that bond betas that are increasing functions of maturity do not necessarily imply an upward-sloping term structure.     

Do green bond and green stock markets boom and bust together? Evidence from China

This paper investigates the green bond-stock correlation in China, as well as the influence of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on that correlation, through cross-quantilogram and partial cross-quantilogram approaches. Directional spillovers are detected at different quantile levels across various investment horizons, and the findings reveal that the green bond and green stock markets are more connected in extreme market conditions than in normal conditions. The results indicate that the dependence structure between these markets exhibits distinct sector variation; only the green stocks (GS) in the water environment treatment (WT) and atmospheric protection (AP) sectors and green bonds (GB) boom together. Besides providing considerable diversification benefits, GB can act as a safe-haven asset for GS. Moreover, we find that spillover effects tend to be medium- and long-term. The uncertainty variable (EPU) is not a significant determinant of the cross-asset relation. The empirical results have significant implications for the formulation of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) portfolio strategies and carbon neutral-oriented policymaking.     

The role of ESG scoring and greenwashing risk in explaining the yields of green bonds: A conceptual framework and an econometric analysis

This article aims to investigate the factors that most influence the yields of public sector and corporate green bonds besides those conveyed by the conventional finance theory (e.g., rating, volatility, maturity). To accomplish that, we first develop a theoretical framework that postulates the negative relationship between the size of the underlying project financed by a green bond issuance, the use of the ESG metrics to quantify such impact, as well as the positive relationship between the risk of greenwashing practices by the issuer, and the yield to maturity of the green bond. We then provide an empirical validation of our conceptual framework by estimating multiple regression models applied to two distinct samples of public and corporate green bonds issued globally in the 2012–2020 period. The reliability of our results is confirmed by further exploring the effects of some key determinants on the yield spread of green versus comparable ordinary bonds of corporate issuers. Our findings corroborate our theoretical predictions showing that investors are inclined to accept lower returns in exchange for contributing to the funding of infrastructure projects with greater impact on the sustainability of target communities or territories and require higher premia as a form of compensation when being exposed to higher risk of greenwashing by issuers. At corporate level, greenwashing risk is higher among manufacturing (rather than services) firms but more pronounced in the financial sector. At public level, greenwashing strategies may be more easily pursued by multinational or sovereign issuers rather than local governments as the former's greater distance from communities enables them to elude investors' controls. Important recommendations are drawn for investors, rating agencies, and policymakers.