The Stock Performance of Green Bond Issuers During COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of China

Abstract

The green bond (GB) is a new financial product in the green finance field that has recently become a corporate social responsibility (CSR) tool for organizations. Previous studies show that high-CSR firms receive more trust from shareholders during a financial crisis. This paper aims to assess the stock performance of publicly listed Chinese companies that issued GBs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bond sample covers 2016–2019 and consists of 67 listed issuers. The paper uses the event study method based on the market and Fama-French (1993) three-factor models. Our results show that GB issuers exhibited significantly positive cumulative abnormal stock returns on the official announcement dates of the COVID-19 outbreak. The positive cumulative abnormal returns are mainly driven by non-financial GB issuers rather than financial GB issuers. The results reflect the attitudes of investors toward GB-issuing companies primarily in the context of the crisis and contribute to the development of green finance policies.