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The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on pollution emissions and how environmental regulation affects this relationship.

In the empirical research, the authors selected panel data for 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019 as samples. First, the authors used the instrumental variable method to verify the existence of the above hypotheses in China. Then, the authors analyzed the moderating effect of different types of environmental regulations on the environmental effects of FDI. Next, in further discussion, the authors analyzed the difference between the environmental effect and the moderating effect in different time periods and regions, respectively. Finally, the authors discussed whether the different intensities of environmental regulations lead to the transfer effect of FDI in choosing investment destinations.

The result shows that FDI can help reduce pollution emissions and create a “pollution halo” effect, which is enhanced by command-and-control regulation but suppressed by market-based incentives. The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party has weakened the pollution halo effect of FDI, while the environmental effect of FDI in the eastern region is not significant, but in the middle and western regions, there is a significant pollution halo effect and a positive moderating effect of environmental regulations. Finally, further analysis reveals that FDI has a transfer effect under command-and-control environmental regulations.

First, the main purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between FDI and pollution emissions from the perspective of heterogeneous environmental regulation. Therefore, there is no detailed discussion on their effect mechanism of them. Second, limited by data, the authors adopt the single index to measure the stringency index of command-and-control and market-based incentive environmental regulations in China. The single index may not be able to fully reflect the intensity of regional environmental regulation, so the construction of a composite indicator is necessary. These shortcomings are the focus of the authors' future research.

Under the guidance of high-quality development, the conclusions above can provide reference for adjusting FDI policies and improving environmental regulation policies.

The innovations in this paper can be summarized as the following four dimensions: First, the authors use the instrumental variable (IV) method to address endogeneity in the relationship between FDI and pollution emission, which can further ensure the robustness of the research results and increases the credibility of the paper. Second, the authors distinguish between two types of environmental regulations to investigate their moderating effect on the environmental impact of FDI. Third, the authors consider the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of both the environmental effects of FDI and the moderating effect of regulation. Last, the authors analyze the spatial spillover of environmental regulation through the study of the transfer effect.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether air pollution has significant impact on corporate cash holdings and financial leverage.

The data of 199 firms listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange during the period 2009–2020 is analyzed by using pooled ordinary least squares and two-step system generalized method of moments models.

The results indicate that firms in regions with high air pollution tend to increase cash level. In addition, the positive effect of air pollution on cash level is stronger and more significant for environmentally sensitive firms and firms with low operational and distress risk. The results also show insignificant effect of air pollution on financial leverage.

Firms in regions with high air pollution should conduct proactive environmental protection procedures and enhance their eco-efficiency instead of holding excess cash that could negatively affect financial performance. In this context, policymakers should provide financial facilities to firms located in regions with high air pollution and that have low ability to finance environmental investments. On the other hand, the environmental laws and regulations introduced by regulatory authorities can enhance the economic development and firm performance by decreasing the adverse influences of air pollution on corporate financial policies.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is one of few that examines the impact of air pollution on corporate cash holdings and financial leverage in emerging markets.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance impact of air quality as a contributing factor on residential property rents by applying geo-informatics to economic issues. Since air pollution poses a severe health threat, city residents should have a right to know about the (invisible) hazards they are exposed to.

Within spatial-temporal modeling of air pollutants in Berlin, Germany, three interpolation techniques are tested. The most suitable one is selected to create seasonal maps for 2018 and 2021 with pollution concentrations for particulate matter values and nitrogen dioxide for each 1,000 m² cell within the administrative boundaries. Based on the evaluated pollution particulate matter values, which are used as additional variables for semi-parametric regressions the impact of the air quality on rents is estimated.

The findings reveal a compelling association between air quality and the economic aspect of the residential real estate market, with noteworthy implications for both tenants and property investors. The relationship between air pollution variables and rents is statistically significant. However, there is only a “willingness-to- pay” for low particulate matter values, but not for nitrogen dioxide concentrations. With good air quality, residents in Berlin are willing to pay a higher rent (3%).

These results suggest that a “marginal willingness-to-pay” occurs in a German city. The research underscores the multifaceted impact of air quality on the residential rental market in Berlin. The evidence supports the notion that a cleaner environment not only benefits human health and the planet but also contributes significantly to the economic bottom line of property investors.

The paper has a unique data engineering approach. It collects spatiotemporal data from network of state-certified measuring sites to create an index of air pollution. This spatial information is merged with residential listings. Afterward non-linear regression models are estimated.

The aim of the paper is to rank and analyze the key strategies to sustainable finance adoption in the manufacturing sector using Fuzzy Delphi method (FDM), Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) and MICMAC (impact matrix cross-reference multiplication applied to a classification) analysis.

The study develops a novel framework to identify and analyze the mutual relationships among set of sustainable policies using extensive literature survey and experts opinion. Initially, the study found 14 strategies to implement sustainable finance with the help of vast literature. Then, the list of identified factors were screened through Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM). Based on driving and dependence power, the final list of factors are divided into three categories.

The study findings reveal that “environmental rules and practices”, “financial incentives, tax reduction and subsidy”, have strongest driving power for promoting sustainable financial system in Pakistani manufacturing sector. Furthermore, “environmental awareness” and “long term vision” are found to be highly influenced by other corresponding elements in a system.

The ISM approach assists professionals, academics, and managers in identifying and ranking policies in implementing green business techniques. The hierarchical representation of ISM results provides a roadmap for decision-makers to navigate and prioritize factors effectively, facilitating the implementation of strategies that contribute to sustainable growth within organizations.

The study results provide interesting clues regarding green finance policies that provide the foundations, incentives, protections or other provisions that support the ecological conservancy’s mission. Specifically, the findings guide that government must offer research grants to private enterprises, research and development institutions, and universities to promote environmental protection and develop transformative technologies such as waste recycling, renewable energy, carbon capture, and power consumption.

The exploration of strategies for sustainable finance adoption with the help of mixed methodological approach and classification of these strategies on the basis of importance level is a new attempt in the field of manufacturing sector.

This paper examines how firms respond to local government’s environment initiatives through textual analysis of government work reports (GWRs). This study aims to provide insights into how firms strategically respond to government’s environmental initiatives through their disclosure and investment practices.

This study uses a textual analysis of GWRs from China’s provinces. The frequency and change rate of environmental keywords in these reports are used as a measure of the government’s environmental initiatives.

This study finds that environmental disclosure scores in environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports increase with the frequency or change rate of environmental keywords in provincial GWRs. This effect is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, firms in highly marketized provinces or those listed in a single capital market. However, there is no significant relationship between firms’ environmental investments and government initiatives, except for cross-listed firms in provinces with consistently high frequency of environmental keywords in their GWRs.

The findings indicate that government environmental initiatives can shape firms’ disclosure behaviors, yet have limited influence on investment decisions, suggesting that environmental disclosure could potentially be opportunistic. This underscores the need for more effective strategies to stimulate firms’ environmental investments.

This study provides valuable insights into the differential impacts of government environmental initiatives on firms’ disclosure and investment behaviors, contributing to the understanding of corporate environmental responsibility in the context of government initiatives.

In order to achieve sustainable development objectives, safeguard the ecosystem, combat global warming and preserve biodiversity for a more sustainable and secure future, the ecological footprint (EF) must be reduced. Therefore, embracing holistic methods, emphasizing renewable energy (RN) and environmental taxes (ET) is crucial. Therefore, the present study aims to capture the effect of ET and RN on EF in Germany.

To achieve this aim, the novel Fourier-based Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ADL) cointegration and the time and frequency-based connections among the variables are investigated in this work throughout the 1994–2021 time span using the wavelet analytic methods, including wavelet power spectrum (WPS) and wavelet coherence (WC) methods, respectively.

The study’s results express that (1) RN, ET and EF are cointegrated in the long run; (2) EF and RN have volatility; (3) RN use in Germany prevents environmental deterioration and (4) ET decreases EF.

The research findings imply that Germany needs rigorous environmental restrictions and enforcement of alternate energy sources for energy use plans and sustainable production objectives.

To the best of our knowledge, the effect of RN and ET on EF in Germany has not been comprehensively explored by using newly developed econometrics techniques and a single dataset. Therefore, the study provides important policy implementations for the German government and is also likely to open debate on the concept.

In this paper, the authors take the central environmental protection inspection (CEPI) as an exogenous shock to study the reaction of the stock market in China. Using the event study method, the authors check how the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision affects the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of the listed firms on the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

In this paper, the authors take the first round of the first batch of CEPI supervision as a clean exogenous shock to study its effects on the capital market. The authors collect daily trading data from the China stock market and accounting research (CSMAR) database, with the sample containing 1,950 Chinese firms listed on either the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchanges. And detailed information on CEPI supervision is obtained from the official website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China. The event study method is adopted to analyze the reaction of the stock market under CEPI supervision. Specifically, the authors constructed the cumulative abnormal return of each firm around the event day of CEPI. To capture the deterrent effects of CEPI supervision, the authors examine the situation of polluting and non-polluting firms in the supervised provinces, adjacent provinces and provinces that are not supervised or close to the supervised provinces, respectively.

This paper throws light on the following: (1) the polluting firms in the supervised provinces were negatively impacted by CEPI within 20 trading days of the event day, and its effects spread to the polluting firms in the neighboring provinces; (2) CEPI had a favorable impact on the non-polluting businesses in the provinces that are neither supervised nor close to the supervised provinces. The authors contend that it is because the investment is being forced out of the polluting sector and into the non-polluting sector, which is more pronounced in the provinces not directly or indirectly targeted by CEPI; (3) by comparison, the “looking back monitoring of the first round” has had no discernible detrimental impact on the firms' CAR, indicating an important role of psychology anticipation of investors in the stock market performance; (4) although not physically located in the supervised provinces, the downstream enterprises of the polluting firms suffer significantly from CEPI shock; (5) the effectiveness of CEPI supervision in the supervised provinces depends on the level of local environmental regulation and the ownership structure of the company. Private firms in the provinces with stronger environmental regulations suffer more from the CEPI shock; (6) the multivariate analysis shows that while enterprises with high ROE and financial leverage may be at risk of CAR loss, older, larger firms are less likely to experience CEPI shock; (7) the study of persistent effect reveals that the strike of CEPI supervision can last for at least 10 months after the event day and deterrent effect can be spread within the whole polluting industry.

In this paper, the authors only concentrate on the market reaction within 20 trading days after the event day. An analysis of long-term effects should be valuable to get a deeper knowledge of the capital market reaction to the CEPI policy. In addition, the paper only focuses on the first round of the first batch of CEPI. Since CEPI has been built as a constant regulation of local environmental performance, further study may need to track both the reaction of listed firms and investment behavior in the capital market.

Policy implications of the paper are as follows: First, for the policymakers, it is important to construct a constant environmental regulation system instead of a campaign movement. Second, for investors, as environmental issues are receiving increasing attention from both the government and the public, investment decisions should take into account firms' environmental performance, which can help reduce the risk from environmental regulations. Third, the firms in the polluting industry should take more action to reduce pollutant releases and adopt green technology, which is essential for sustainable development under environmental protection.

This paper contributes to the existing literature in the following aspects. First, the authors provide new evidence on the effects of environmental regulations as a shock to the stock market, which has been wildly concentrated in the literature about environmental policies evaluation and capital market reaction. Second, the authors supplement the literature on green finance and sustainability transformation, which has got increasing attention in recent years. Theoretically, by guiding investment and affecting the stock market performance, environmental regulations are considered to be an efficient way to stimulate polluting firms to transform into green development. The results of the paper support this intuition by showing that the CAR of the non-polluting firms in non-supervised provinces in fact benefit from the CEPI supervision.

Current evidence indicates that humans and animals are at increased risk of multiple health challenges due to microplastic (MP) profusion. However, mitigation is constrained by inadequate scientific data, further aggravated by the lack of evidence in many African countries. This review therefore synthesized evidence on the current extent of MP pollution in Africa and the analytical techniques for reporting.

A literature search was undertaken in research databases. Medical subject headings (MeSH) terms and keywords were used in the literature search. The authors found 38 studies from 10 countries that met the inclusion criteria.

Marine organisms had MPs prevalence ranging from 19% to 100%, whereas sediments and water samples had between 77 and 100%. The most common and dominant polymers included polypropylene and polyethylene.

This review shows that most studies still use methods that are prone to human errors. Therefore, the concentration of MPs is likely underestimated, even though the authors’ prevalence evaluations show MPs are still largely pervasive across multiple environmental matrices. Also, the study reveals significant spatial disparity in MP research across the African continent, showing the need for further research in other African countries.

Even though some reviews have assessed MPs pollution in Africa, they have not evaluated sample prevalence, which is necessary to understand not only concentration but pervasiveness across the continent. Secondly, this study delves deeper into various methods of sampling, extraction and analysis of MPs, as well as limitations and relevant recommendations.

Green transition is a long-term direction of corporate development that can achieve sustainable corporate development. This study aims to investigate whether state ownership promotes corporate green transition by mitigating managerial myopia and the impact of environmental regulations, internal controls and ownership on this pathway.

Using data from 2,608 Chinese listed companies for 2010–2019, the authors investigate the relationship between state ownership, managerial myopia and corporate green transition by using fixed-effects and moderated mediation models.

State ownership can boost green transitions and alleviate managerial myopia. Managerial myopia mediates the relationship between state ownership and corporate green transition. Furthermore, environmental regulations, internal controls and ownership moderate the mediating effects of managerial myopia.

The authors construct a multidimensional green transition index to examine the influence of state ownership on corporate green transition behavior and reveal the underlying mechanism by which state ownership promotes green transition by “mitigating managerial myopia.” This study enriches the literature on state ownership, management myopia and green transition and provides important evidence for the promotion of mixed ownership reforms.

This study aims to empirically examine the influence of financial constraints on firm carbon emissions. In addition to the role of financial constraints in firm-level carbon emissions, this study also examines this influence in the presence of governance, environmental orientation and firm-level attributes.

Using pooled ordinary least square, this study examines the impact of financial constraints on firm-level carbon emissions using a panel of 1,536 US firm-year observations from 2008 to 2019. This study also used two-step generalized method of moment–based dynamic panel data and two-stage least square approaches to address potential endogeneity. The results are robust to endogeneity and collinearity issues.

The results suggest that financial constraints enhance the carbon emissions of the firms. The economic significance of financial constraints on carbon emissions is more pronounced for the firms that do not report environment-related expenditure investment and those that are highly leveraged. The authors further document that firms with a nondiverse gender board signify a statistically significant impact of financial constraints on carbon emissions. These results are also economically significant, as one standard deviation increase in financial constraints is associated with a 3.340% increase in carbon emissions at the firm level.

Some implicit and explicit factors like corporate emissions policy and culture may condition the relationship of financial constraints with carbon emissions. Therefore, it would be worthwhile to consider these factors for future research. In addition, it is beneficial to identify the thresholds and/or quantiles at which financial constraints may significantly make a difference in enhancing carbon emissions.

The findings offer policy implications for investment in stakeholder engagement for capital acquisitions, thereby effectively enforcing environmental innovation and leading to a reduction in carbon emissions.

This study integrated governance and environment-oriented variables in the model to empirically examine the role of financial constraints on the carbon emissions of the firms in the USA over and above what has already been documented in the earlier literature.