Exploring the Shades of Green Premium: A Matching Approach

Nowadays, investors are paying increasing attention to corporate environmental commitment as a consequence of the climate change debate momentum. In the last few years, the green bond market has continuously grown, from the first 1 billion issuances in early 2013 to the total amount of issuances in 2021 equal to half a trillion dollars. In this sense, this work firstly aims at assessing the enduring persistence of a green premium within a context of great downturn upon markets started with the pandemic, by the adoption of a nearest neighbour matching approach in a matched sample of conventional and green bonds. Secondly, this chapter explores the role of different labels and certifications of environmental commitment applied to green bonds issuances in reducing information asymmetries and determining a change in the acceptable yield by investors. Thus, different labels to green bonds issuance as self-green declarations, ESG disclosure, external guarantees and self-documented greenness are observed to respectively evaluate the benefits of different green facets on markets investors’ perception.