The Women University, Multan, Pakistan; AiHawks, Multan, Pakistan.
School of Public Finance, College of Economics, Law and Government, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, 700000, Viet Nam; Health and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, College of Economics, Law and Government, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, 700000, Viet Nam.
J Environ Manage. 2022 Nov 15;322:116062. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116062. Epub 2022 Aug 28.
Financial development is an important driver of technological progress in economic development. Its role in environmental change has not been well examined. We endeavor to examine the non-linear effects of multi-dimensional financial development measures on four kinds of ecological footprints in a global sample of 124 economies. We apply a two-step system generalized method of moments to deal with possible endogeneity. We find a stark difference in the impact of financial institutions' development and financial markets' development on the ecological footprints. Whereas financial institutions, with their three dimensions (i.e., depth, access, and efficiency) have an inverted-U shaped relationship with the ecological footprints, allowing for the initially harmful effect on the environment to revert to beneficial effects, the same results are not observed for financial markets. We attribute the inverse-U shaped relationship to a declining scale effect of FD and rising technological and composition effects of FD that transform the economy. Based on that we recommend that best practices of financial institutions regarding making environmentally conscious investment decisions be turned into a conscious investing culture around the world. For this to become a reality, better information-sharing regarding the individual environmental performance of firms will be needed.
金融发展是经济发展中技术进步的重要驱动因素。它在环境变化中的作用尚未得到充分研究。我们努力在全球 124 个经济体的样本中检验多维金融发展措施对四种生态足迹的非线性影响。我们采用两步系统广义矩方法来处理可能的内生性。我们发现金融机构发展和金融市场发展对生态足迹的影响有很大的不同。虽然金融机构的三个维度（即深度、获取和效率）与生态足迹呈倒 U 型关系，允许最初对环境的有害影响恢复为有益影响，但金融市场没有观察到相同的结果。我们将倒 U 型关系归因于 FD 的规模效应下降和 FD 的技术和组成效应上升，这些效应改变了经济。基于此，我们建议将金融机构在做出环保投资决策方面的最佳实践转变为全球范围内的自觉投资文化。为了实现这一目标，需要更好地共享有关公司个别环境绩效的信息。
