Tanja Artiga Gonzalez, Laura Capera Romero, Egle Karmaziene, Xin Yuan
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Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between environmental performance and the use of sustainability-linked loans (SLLs) by U.S. real estate investment trusts (REITs). We find that a 1 % reduction in past carbon emissions increases the REITs' likelihood of taking an SLL by 29.6 %, while a 1 % slower growth in past emissions reduces the interest spread by 1.6 basis points. Our results reveal that banks reward REITs' previous environmental record through SLLs, whereas non-SLL interest spreads remain unaffected. These findings underscore the importance of explicit sustainability-linked financial instruments in incentivizing decarbonization efforts within the real estate sector.
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