活动内容

Topic

The Nature of Green Finance Standards  - Evolution, Application and Typology

Speaker

Dr. Christoph B NEDOPIL WANG

Central University for Finance and Economics

Abstract

Green finance standards have proliferated with much need for harmonization to accelerate global green financial flows. However, we find in this paper that global green finance standards across countries differ in multiple aspects and that further harmonization requires a much better understanding of the reasons for the differences of existing green finance standards. Based on institutional and standards theory, text analysis and statistical methods, we analyze 84 green finance standards issued from 1998 to 2020 and find clear evidence that green finance standard development differ in countries with different economic governance types (e.g. market-based, government-based and weak institutional environment), with different environmental focus areas (e.g. pollution, climate, biodiversity) with different actors in government, associations and financial institutions, and that this development is dynamic over the last decades. We further test and confirm three models of green finance standards: output-based, input-based and process standards. With the findings, we aim to provide a better foundation for both research and policy in future green finance standard research, development and harmonization, particularly to include local and path-dependent specificities in green finance standards.