Green bonds and intelligent manufacturing: Evidence from listed firms in China

Manufacturing industry serves as a key contributor to economic growth, while intelligent manufacturing has critical relevance for manufacturing upgrading. We adopt a difference-in-differences method to evaluate how green bonds affect the development of intelligent manufacturing based on data representing publicly listed firms in China from 2012 to 2021. The results show that issuing green bonds increases intelligent manufacturing significantly, by 1.22 % on average, with green innovation serving as a channel for that impact. However, the effect of green bonds varies depending on nature of equity, level of pollution, and level of intelligent manufacturing. Issuing green bonds primarily enhances the intelligent manufacturing level of private-owned, non-heavily polluting, and highly intelligent enterprises. These findings indicate that promoting green bond issuance among enterprises could effectively accelerate intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry.